By analyzing the high-momentum features of the nucleon momentum distribution in light and complex nuclei, it is argued that the basic two-nucleon configurations generating the structure of the nucleon spectral function at high values of the nucleon momentum and removal energy can be properly described by a factorized ansatz for the nuclear wave function, which leads to a nucleon spectral function in the form of a convolution integral involving the momentum distributions describing the relative and center-of-mass motion of a correlated nucleon-nucleon pair embedded in the medium. The spectral functions of ${}_{}{}^3{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{He}$ and infinite nuclear matter resulting from the convolution formula and from many-body calculations are compared, and a very good agreement in a wide range of values of nucleon momentum and removal energy is found. Applications of the model to the analysis of inclusive and exclusive processes are presented, illustrating those features of the cross section which are sensitive to that part of the spectral function which is governed by short-range and tensor nucleon-nucleon correlations. © 1996 The American Physical Society.

• Received 13 July 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.53.1689