New insight into the observation of spectroscopic strength reduction in atomic nuclei: implication for the physical meaning of spectroscopic factors.

Experimental studies of one-nucleon knockout from magic nuclei suggest that their nucleon orbits are not fully occupied. This conflicts a commonly accepted view of the shell closure associated with such nuclei. The conflict can be reconciled if the overlap between initial and final nuclear states in a knockout reaction are calculated by a nonstandard method. The method employs an inhomogeneous equation based on correlation-dependent effective nucleon-nucleon interactions and allows the simplest wave functions, in which all nucleons occupy only the lowest nuclear orbits, to be used. The method also reproduces the recently established relation between reduction of spectroscopic strength, observed in knockout reactions on other nuclei, and nucleon binding energies. The implication of the inhomogeneous equation method for the physical meaning of spectroscopic factors is discussed.