Center - of - mass effects on the quasi - hole spectroscopic factors in the 16 O ( e , e ′ p ) reaction

The spectroscopic factors for the low-lying quasi-hole states observed in the 16O(e, e′p)15N reaction are reinvestigated with a variational Monte Carlo calculation for the structure of the initial and final nucleus. A computational error in a previous report is rectified. It is shown that a proper treatment of center-of-mass motion does not lead to a reduction of the spectroscopic factor for p-shell quasi-hole states, but rather to a 7% enhancement. This is in agreement with analytical results obtained in the harmonic oscillator model. The center-of-mass effect worsens the discrepancy between present theoretical models and the experimentally observed single-particle strength. We discuss the present status of this problem, including some other mechanisms that may be relevant in this respect. Typeset using REVTEX