Julain Kahlbow (LBNL): Probing nuclear correlations with high-energy hadronic reactions

Monday Sep 14, 2026, 1:50 PM → 2:40 PM US/Eastern

604 (Nielsen)

The atomic nucleus is a complex many-body system fundamentally rooted in QCD, yet effectively described by protons and neutrons at adequate scale. Nuclear structure and its emergent features are driven by long- and short-range correlations that extend beyond the independent-particle picture. However, disentangling reaction dynamics from universal ground-state physics remains a critical challenge—one that requires tailored reaction probes and kinematics. In this talk, I will discuss leveraging single-nucleon knockout reactions in inverse and hard kinematics to study single-particle behavior and short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations (SRCs). I will present recent experimental results from JINR and GSI-FAIR using (p,2p) reactions with a 12C beam at a few GeV/nucleon. The results indicate a scale-dependent interpretation of nuclear structure. Additionally, I will report the first SRC measurements using a radioactive 16C beam. These results pave the way for future SRC studies across the nuclear chart.