Deuteron distribution in nuclei and the Levinger’s factor

We compute the distribution of quasideuterons in doubly closed shell nuclei. The ground states of ¹⁶O and ⁴⁰Ca are described in ls coupling using a realistic Hamiltonian including the Argonne v₈^′ and the Urbana IX models of two- and three-nucleon potentials, respectively. The nuclear wave function contains central and tensor correlations, and correlated basis functions theory is used to evaluate the distribution of neutron-proton pairs, having the deuteron quantum numbers, as a function of their total momentum. By computing the number of deuteronlike pairs we are able to extract Levinger’s factor and compare to both the available experimental data and the predictions of the local density approximation, based on nuclear matter estimates. The agreement with the experiments is excellent, whereas the local density approximation is shown to sizably overestimate Levinger’s factor in the region of the medium nuclei.