Imaging two-body correlations in atomic nuclei via low- and high-energy processes

Characterizing the correlated behavior of nucleons inside atomic nuclei constitutes a long-standing challenge, both experimentally and theoretically. It has recently been understood that two-particle correlations in the azimuthal distribution of hadrons emitted in the final state of ultra-relativistic ultra-central ion-ion collisions can be used to quantify ground-state two-body correlations. Performing systematic ab initio nuclear structure calculations of light nuclei, such an observable is shown to provide a meaningful imaging of angular two-body correlations of various multipolarities in nuclear ground states. This is at variance with the traditional interpretation of the low-energy approach relying on Kumar operators that is shown to be inoperative. A future interesting development will consist of targeting specific three-particle correlations to isolate three-nucleon correlations in which additional nuclear structure information of interest leave their fingerprint.