{"id":219192,"date":"2025-08-01T04:21:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T09:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/measuring-three-nucleon-interactions-to-better-understand-nuclear-data-and-neutron-stars"},"modified":"2025-08-01T04:21:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T09:21:46","slug":"measuring-three-nucleon-interactions-to-better-understand-nuclear-data-and-neutron-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/measuring-three-nucleon-interactions-to-better-understand-nuclear-data-and-neutron-stars","title":{"rendered":"Measuring three-nucleon interactions to better understand nuclear data and neutron stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/measuring-three-nucleon-interactions-to-better-understand-nuclear-data-and-neutron-stars.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Though atomic nuclei are often depicted as static clusters of protons and neutrons (nucleons), the particles are actually bustling with movement. Thus, the nucleons carry a range of momenta. Sometimes, these nucleons may even briefly engage through the strong interaction. This interaction between two nucleons can boost the momentum of both and form high-momentum nucleon pairs. This effect yields two-nucleon short-range correlations.<\/p>\n<p>Experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have studied these pairs to learn how protons and neutrons preferentially pair up at short distances. However, short-range correlations involving three or more nucleons haven\u2019t been detected yet.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in a study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0370269325004952?via%3Dihub\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physics Letters B<\/i>, researchers used data from a 2018 experiment in Jefferson Lab\u2019s Hall A to measure the signature of three\u2013<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/nucleon\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">nucleon<\/a> short-range correlations for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though atomic nuclei are often depicted as static clusters of protons and neutrons (nucleons), the particles are actually bustling with movement. Thus, the nucleons carry a range of momenta. Sometimes, these nucleons may even briefly engage through the strong interaction. This interaction between two nucleons can boost the momentum of both and form high-momentum nucleon [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}