  Nucleon momentum distributions calculated with a common one-body operator
vary with the resolution scale (and scheme) of the Hamiltonian used. For
high-resolution potentials such as Argonne $v_{18}$ (AV18) there is a
high-momentum tail, reflecting short-range correlations in the nuclear wave
function, which is reduced or absent for softer, lower-resolution interactions.
We explore if the similarity renormalization group (SRG) can be used to
quantitatively reproduce the high-resolution distributions from variational
Monte Carlo at all momenta using SRG-evolved operators and empirically fit
single-particle orbitals rather than a full RG evolution of many-body wave
functions. The goal of this approach is to enable calculations of
high-resolution distributions for a wider range of nuclei as well as for other
interactions, and provides connections to phenomenological analyses of
experiments.
