We studied the 12 C(p,2p+n) reaction at beam momenta of 5.9, 8.0 and 9.0 GeV/c. For quasielastic (p,2p) events we reconstructed p f the momentum of the knocked-out proton before the reaction; p f was then compared (event-by-event) with pn, the measured, coincident neutron momentum. For |pn| > kF = 0.220 GeV/c (the Fermi momentum) a strong back-to-back directional correlation between p f and pn was observed, indicative of short-range n-p correlations. From pn and p f we constructed the distributions of c.m. and relative motion in the longitudinal direction for correlated pairs. After correcting for detection efficiency, flux attenuation and solid angle, we determined that 49 ± 13 % of events with |p f | > kF had directionally correlated neutrons with |pn| > kF . Thus short-range 2N correlations are a major source of high-momentum nucleons in nuclei.
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