Experimental study of nuclear few-body systems at Jefferson Lab

In a new and detailed experimental program carried out at Jefferson Laboratory, the few nucleon systems has been studied via electrodisintegration of deuterium and the helium nuclei. Interesting new results probing the high momentum structure have been studied via the (e, e(1)p) reaction using the two high resolution spectrometers in Hall A and various kinematic regions have been investigated. Detailed and precise information on the effective bound state momentum distributions have been measured for the first time up to missing momenta of 1 Gev/c in He-3, exhibiting significant strength at these high momenta which standard nuclear calculations fail to explain and could be an indication of the onset of non-nucleonic degrees of freedom. The continuum region in He-3 has also been investigated in great detail looking for nuclear correlations and quasi-deuteron strength. Response function separations have been carried out to extract details of the few body structure and relativistic dynamics. Measurements made so far on D and He-4 have focussed on specific kinematic regions and there are plans to extend them over kinematic ranges similar to the He-3 investigation.