Proton-cluster femtoscopy with the HADES experiment

The matter created in Ag+Ag collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.55 GeV, as measured with the HADES experiment, can be characterized by similar thermodynamic quantities as Neutron Star Mergers, thus becoming an essential reference for the understanding of these compact stellar objects. One of the methods applied to investigate heavy-ion collisions are femtoscopic correlations. They are a unique tool for the determination of the interactions between hadrons and allow to search for possible exited or unbound states of nuclear matter. We performed precise experimental studies of the correlations between protons and different clusters and compared them with the existing theoretical descriptions.