Universality of short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations

Short-range correlations between nucleon pairs in different spin-isospin channels are investigated for light nuclei using the Argonne v8' interaction. At distances below 1 fm a universal behavior is found for the deuteron, H-3, He-3, and for ground and first excited states in He-4. This behavior in coordinate space is reflected by a universal behavior for the high-momentum components in momentum space. The universality indicates that a pairwise renormalization is possible in order to obtain a universal effective two-body interaction that does not scatter to high-momentum states. The exact two-body densities are compared with those obtained using the unitary correlation operator method with simple trial wave functions. The effect of three-body correlations due to the tensor force on the two-body densities is discussed.