Probing the nuclear interaction at neutron-stars densities

The nature of the nucleon-nucleon interaction at shorter distances, typical of dense nuclear systems such as neutron stars, is very poorly constrained experimentally. This limits our ability to describe the equation of state and other properties of such dense astrophysical systems. I will present new constraints on the short-distance behavior of the NN interaction. This is done by combining recent experimental advances in measurements of high-energy electron scattering data that isolate temporal short-distance, high-momentum, fluctuations in atomic nuclei and theoretical advances in describing high-Q2 electro induced knockout reactions using the new GCF framework. Considering states in the momentum range of 0.3 - 1.0 GeV/c, we observe a transition from a spin-dependent Tensor-force at MeV/c to spin-independent scalar-force. We quantify the onset of scalar-force dominance and observe that local interaction models, with a hard repulsive-core at short-distance, provide the best description of our data.