Polarizations for proton knockout reactions from s1/2 orbits at 1 GeV -: art. no. 024604

The polarization of protons emitted in (p,2p) reactions has been measured for three kinds of targets at 1 GeV. The values of the polarization that we obtain are significantly smaller than the values predicted using the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction in free space, and the discrepancy between the two is seen to increase monotonically as a function of the effective mean density, which is defined as a measure of the sensitivity of a reaction to density-dependent terms of the interaction. The experimental data are also compared with a model calculation that includes a relativistic effect, and it is found that inclusion of this effect is able to account for about half of the density-dependent discrepancy between the experimental results and the values predicted with the free space NN interaction. These results, in conjunction with the previous results at 392 MeV, indicate that this discrepancy is not caused by a contribution of multistep processes and provide further evidence that there exists a medium effect.