L. B. Weinstein (Old Dominion University), Or Hen (Tel Aviv University), and Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University)

Abstract
Recent advances in the study of the short-range structure of nuclei indicate that about 25% of nucleons in medium to heavy nuclei have momentum greater than the Fermi momentum ($k > k_F$). These high-momentum nucleons are found to be predominantly in short-range correlated proton-neutron pairs, created by the tensor part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. Since these high momentum nucleons account for a significant fraction of the momentum distribution of nucleons in symmetric nuclear matter but not in pure neutron matter, they are expected to affect the nuclear symmetry energy, and specifically its separation into kinetic and potential terms.

[1] R. Subedi et al., Science 320, 1476 (2008).
[2] O. Hen et al., Science 346, 614 (2014).