Investigating the Strangeness of Neutron Stars

A comprehensive understanding of the strong nuclear force is a primary goal of nuclear physics. One step towards a complete understanding is uncovering the dynamics of interactions involving hyperons (strange baryons). While the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction has been studied extensively, the nature of the hyperon-nucleon (YN) interaction is largely a mystery. Understanding hyperon interaction could also help paint a better picture of neutron stars by confronting the “hyperon” puzzle”. This work analyses data collected by the g13 experiment, which ran at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, with the key objective of studying the interactions of a hyperon. This was done by studying the final state interactions of the reaction of interest, namely, by extracting the beam spin asymmetry. The beam spin asymmetry was extracted using the previously established maximum likelihood technique. The results of the analysis indicate towards hyperon rescattering events dominating the reaction of interest. The two-fold binning method used isolated kinematic regions within which hyperon interactions were especially dominant.