EUSTRONG Project

ERC AdG EUSTRONG Project

The strong interaction is responsible for holding neutrons and protons together in atomic nuclei and for the particle interactions in neutron stars, where matter has been crushed to extremes in density. The ERC-funded EUSTRONG project is shedding light on these dense matter interactions both from microscopic calculations and directly from astrophysics, including from new NASA NICER observations. The same strong interactions will be tested in key heavy nuclei including full uncertainty quantification. This will be realized by developing many-body calculations with new emulation and tensor network methods. Another objective is to derive the response of heavy nuclei in dark matter direct detection and coherent neutrino scattering, where a reliable understanding of strong interaction effects is crucial.