Meson exchange currents in electromagnetic one-nucleon emission

Abstract

The role of meson exchange currents (MEC) in electron- and photon-induced one-nucleon emission processes is studied in a nonrelativistic model including correlations and final state interactions. The nuclear current is the sum of a one-body and of a two-body part. The two-body current includes pion seagull, pion-in-flight and the isobar current contributions. Numerical results are presented for the exclusive 16O(e,e'p)15N and 16O(γ,p)15N reactions. MEC effects are in general rather small in (e,e'p), while in (γ,p) they are always large and important to obtain a consistent description of (e,e'p) and (γ,p) data, with the same spectroscopic factors. The calculated (γ,p) cross sections are sensitive to short-range correlations at high values of the recoil momentum, where MEC effects are larger and overwhelm the contribution of correlations.