Probing Cold Dense Nuclear Matter

The nucleons in the nucleus can form strongly correlated pairs. Recent scattering experiments, in which a proton is knocked-out from carbon with high-momentum transfer and high missing momentum, have shown that neutron-proton pairs are nearly 20 times as prevalent as proton-proton and, by inference, neutron-neutron pairs. This result, which is due to tensor correlations, has implications for our understanding of nuclear systems from nuclei to neutron stars.