Nuclear Neutron-Proton Contact and the Photoabsorption Cross Section

The nuclear neutron-proton contact is introduced, generalizing Tan's work, and evaluated from medium energy nuclear photodisintegration experiments. To this end we reformulate the quasideuteron model of nuclear photodisintegration and establish the bridge between the Levinger constant and the contact. Using experimental evaluations of Levinger's constant, we extract the value of the neutron-proton contact in finite nuclei and in symmetric nuclear matter. Assuming isospin symmetry we propose to evaluate the neutron-neutron contact through the measurement of photonuclear spin correlated neutron-proton pairs.