The gravitational waves from merging binary systems carry unique information about the nature and internal structure of compact objects. This is of key interest for neutron stars, whose material is compressed by strong gravity to supra-nuclear densities, leading to unique states of matter. I will describe examples of resulting gravitational-wave signatures and associated characteristic...
Employing storage rings for precision physics experiments with highly-charged ions (HCI) at the intersection of atomic, nuclear, plasma and astrophysics is a rapidly developing field of research. Storage of freshly produced secondary particles in a storage ring is a straightforward way to achieve the most efficient use of the rare species. It allows for determining the mass of the species...
For many years, nuclear medicine was focus mainly on imaging using Technecium-99m. Some therapy was conducted using Iodine-131 mainly to treat thyroid cancer. In the 2000’s, positron emission tomography (PET) imaging arrived leading to a new wave of applications for nuclear medicine especially in cancer imaging using Flurodesoxyglucose labelled with fluorine-18 (18F-FDG). Several attempt to...
Heavy ion collisions provide a unique laboratory for exploring the dynamics of the strong nuclear force, governed by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). These collisions probe strongly interacting matter across different regimes, from the partonic structure of nuclei to the quark-gluon plasma (QGP)—a deconfined state of quarks and gluons that existed in the early universe. Experiments spanning a...
In the last years the correlation measurements at LHC, particularly performed in small colliding systems such as proton-proton collisions, proved to be a powerful experimental tool to access the strong force between hadrons. A large amount of interactions among stable or unstable hadrons have not been measured yet and theoretical calculations based on effective lagrangians and/or starting...
In recent decades, γ-ray spectroscopy has experienced a significant technological advancement through the technique of γ-ray tracking, achieving a sensitivity almost two orders of magnitude greater than previous Compton-shielded arrays. This leap forward rivals the milestones achieved since the beginning of γ-ray spectroscopy. Combining γ-ray spectrometers with detectors recording...
Neutron stars are unique laboratories to probe matter in extreme conditions that cannot be currently reproduced on Earth. The determination of their equation of state (EoS) is a challenge, but it is particularly important since it allows to relate different global neutron-star properties and to link the prediction of astrophysical observables to microphysical properties of dense matter.
In...
Advances in quantum information science have provided new tools and concepts that shed further light on the structure and dynamics of quantum many-body systems and on the underlying forces that govern them. These new insights, together with cross-fertilization and exchange of ideas between fields, are enabling the development of improved methods and algorithms for simulating many-body physics....
In hypernuclear physics, it is important to study structure of light hypernuclei to extract information on hyperon-nucleon interaction. Recently, observed bound $\Xi$ hypernuclei such as $^{14}{\rm N}+\Xi$ and $^{11}{\rm B}+\Xi$ systems have been observed. Along this line, it is requested to predict what kind of $\Xi$ hypernuclei should be observed theoretically. In this talk, I will review...
13 beta-delayed two-proton (β2p) emitters are known today: $^{22}$Al, $^{22,23}$Si, $^{26}$P, $^{27}$S, $^{31}$Ar, $^{35}$Ca, $^{39}$Ti, $^{43}$Cr, $^{45,46}$Fe, and $^{50,51}$Ni. The Q-value (the energy released in the decay) is a major determining factor for what type of beta-delayed decays occur, and therefore two-proton emitters are found at or close to the dripline. Nuclear structure also...
Neutron dark decays have been suggested as a solution to the discrepancy between bottle and beam experiments, providing a dark matter candidate that can be searched for in halo nuclei. The free neutron in the final state following the decay of $^{6}$He into $^{4}$He + n + χ provides an exceptionally clean detection signature when combined with a high efficiency neutron detector. We will report...
Understanding the collective behavior emerging in high-energy collisions is a central goal of contemporary heavy-ion physics. Using recent results from the LHC, this talk will present an experimental overview of how light and strange hadrons, as well as (hyper)nuclei, serve as soft probes of the dynamics and hadronization of the Quark-Gluon Plasma.
The presentation will cover selected...
Shell evolution in nuclei far from stability, such as those in the region of $N\geq28$ and $Z<20$, is understood to arise from the complex interplay of orbital interactions, with different interactions accessible in unstable nuclei compared to stability. Experimental studies of these exotic regions provide stringent tests of modern shell model interactions, but are difficult to access...
In this contribution, I present our latest developments in the study of neutron-rich nuclei. In particular, recent observations of a sharp low-energy structure in the four-neutron missing mass distribution [1] —following the fast removal of the $^4$He core from $^8$He nucleus—have sparked considerable interest. We have been able to explain this phenomenon as a consequence of neutron...
The world’s leading measurement of the neutron’s electric dipole moment (EDM) is currently ongoing at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI): the n2EDM experiment. n2EDM will deliver, at minimum, an order of magnitude better sensitivity as compared to current limits on the neutron EDM. This increased sensitivity on the neutron EDM will provide stringent constraints on time-reversal violating...
Quantum computers offer the promise of efficiently solving problems which suffer exponential scaling with problem size on classical computers. In application to the simulation of physical systems, quantum computers may be able to overcome the explosion of Hilbert space size with particle number, and to deal efficiently with entangled states.
In this contribution, we show some...
This talk will present two resonant elastic scattering experiments addressing questions in nuclear astrophysics and nuclear structure. The first experiment focuses on the production of 18F in classical novae, critical for gamma-ray emissions from 𝛽+ decay. The reaction 18F( 𝑝, 𝛼)15O, which destroys 18F, remains uncertain due to limited spec-
troscopic data for 19Ne in the Gamow window. To...
Alpha decay is known for more than a century, however a global microscopic description of this process has only been successfully developed recently by Mercier et al. [1]. Within the framework of covariant energy density functional, using a least action principle, the half-life of medium and heavy nuclei agree within one order of magnitude with experimental value [2].
Moreover, a new type...
The calculation of many-body correlations in atomic nuclei using ab initio approaches requires accounting for virtual excitations, whose number grows factorially with the perturbative order.
Diagrammatic Monte Carlo (DiagMC) is a promising method that efficiently includes high-order excitations. It has been particularly successful in condensed matter physics [1, 2], where it enables the...
Neutron-rich oxygen isotopes provide a unique probe to test state-of-the-art shell-model interactions such as SFO-tls [1] and YSOX [2]. In particular, 19O and 20O isotopes can be further employed to constrain shell evolution near the drip-lines, a crucial step towards a universal interaction. In this regard, single-nucleon transfer reactions are suitable tools to study the single-particle...
The $^{197}$Au($\gamma$,n)$^{196}$Au reaction is commonly used as a reference process to measure the gamma beam intensity in photonuclear reaction experiments. However, at energies higher than 14.7 MeV, the cross-section values of the $^{197}$Au($\gamma$,n)$^{196}$Au reaction available in the literature (both from experiments and theory) exhibit conflicting values. Thus, we performed a new...
The study of beta decay of neutron rich nuclei is particularly important for many fields in fundamental and applied physics [1]. In nuclear reactors, fission products, through their decays, produce an additional energy called decay heat [2]. The assesment of this energy is essential for nuclear safety since it represents around 7% of the power in an operating reactor and these decays continue...
Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, predicts that at sufficiently high energy densities, nuclear matter undergoes a phase transition into a deconfined state known as the quark–gluon plasma (QGP). Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions provide ideal conditions to explore the QCD phase diagram and investigate the properties of the QGP as a function of...
In-beam γ-ray spectroscopy and invariant/missing mass studies from quasi-free scattering or knockout reactions on secondary fragmentation beams are often the preferable techniques to give access to the most exotic nuclei and perform their first spectroscopy. Illustratively, such studies have recently enabled to quantify the magic character of 54Ca [1,2], 78Ni[3], but as importantly to...
The femtoscopy technique at the Large Hadron Collider has proven capable of providing unprecedented precision information on the low-energy interaction between nucleons and strange hadrons. The experimental methodology exploits the emission of particle pairs at the femtometer scale in the collisions and analyzes the momentum correlation induced by free scattering of the produced hadrons. The...
Neutron-induced reaction cross sections of short-lived nuclei are essential in nuclear astrophysics and for applications in nuclear technology. However, these cross sections are very difficult or impossible to measure due to the difficulty in producing and handling the necessary radioactive targets. We are developing a project that uses for the first time surrogate reactions in inverse...
As experimental measurements and industrial applications of nuclear fission continue to develop, there is an increasing demand for theoretical models to simulate fission processes with high precision, including both reactions commonly used in applications today and exotic processes involving superheavy nuclei which have not yet been observed. The construction of such a model remains a...
The Standard Model of particle physics is a widely accepted and well-established theory that is able to describe electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions using a common framework. However, phenomena such as masses of the neutrinos, the matter–antimatter asymmetry and the nature of dark matter and dark energy remain unexplained. At the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) we are setting up an...
The search for Alpha-Cluster Condensate State (ACS) in always more heavy nuclei is one of the most intriguing puzzles of nuclear structure. In particular, in2021, Adachi et al. observed three states in $^{20}$Ne at 21.2, 21.8, and 23.6 MeV [1]. Such states have been suggested to be realistic candidates, being their decay well correlated with the underlying ACSs in lighter nuclei [2].In this...
Studying the structure of exotic nuclei near shell closures is a powerful tool to investigate the underlying nuclear forces. The regions around N=20N=20 and N=28N=28 are known to exhibit significant shape transitions arising from a subtle interplay between monopole evolution—such as the tensor force—and quadrupole excitations leading to deformation.
Previous studies have shown that the...
The WASA-FRS HypHI Experiment focuses on the study of light hypernuclei by means of heavy-ion induced reactions in 6Li collisions with 12C at 1.96GeV/u. It is part of the WASA-FRS experimental campaign, and so is the eta-prime experiment [1]. The distinctive combination of the high-resolution spectrometer FRagment Separator (FRS) [2] and the high-acceptance detector system WASA [3] is used....
The study of light hypernuclei, subatomic nuclei containing strange quarks, is an active area of research explored by multiple collaborations [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Recent investigations using high energy heavy ion collisions have yielded surprising insights into the three body hypernuclear state, Λ3H (hypertriton). Experimental measurements of its lifetime [1,2,3,7,8,9,10] and binding energy...
Enrico De Filippo (INFN Catania)
for the R3B Collaboration
Constraining the asymmetry term of the EoS is important, among other reasons, for its strict connection with multi-messenger astrophysics, such as compact stars and core collapse supernovae phenomena. By using as main observable the elliptic flow ratio of neutrons and charged particles [1,2], the ASY-EOS...
Since the advent of radioactive ion beam facilities, excited states in exotic neutron-rich carbon isotopes have been an interesting object of study. In the late 90’s, three $^{17}$C resonant states above the $^{16}$C+n threshold were observed using the beta-delayed neutron decay of $^{17}$B [Raimann96]. More resonances were observed in later works using transfer [Bohlen07], proton inelastic...
The so-called ab initio approach to nuclear structure allows to describe atomic nuclei with controlled and systematically improvable approximations.
Such nuclear structure calculations employing interactions derived from chiral effective field theory are nowadays routinely performed in heavy or open-shell systems.
But describing nuclei that are at the same time both heavy and open-shell is...
Over the last decade, remarkable advances have been made in the theoretical description of electromagnetic properties of atomic nuclei, stimulated by a wealth of high-quality experimental data on short-lived radionuclides (see references [1-6]). In particular, nuclear charge radii have proven to be highly sensitive probes of phenomena such as pairing, deformation, or shell closures, and thus...
The crust of a neutron star is important for many astrophysical phenomena such as the cooling of the star and its transport properties. I will present calculations of the neutron-star crust within a compressible liquid drop model both at zero and finite temperature. I will also discuss results for neutron-star-crust elastic properties, such as the shear modulus, and their associated...
Around us we see an universe filled with galaxies, stars and planets like ours. But when we look back to the Big Bang and the processes that created the matter in it, at first we observe that there should have been created the same amount of matter and antimatter, thus the universe would be empty or different than it is. Sakharov suggested several conditions to explain the matter-antimatter...
The dual-radiator RICH (dRICH) detector of the ePIC experiment at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will employ Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) for Cherenkov light detection. The photodetector system will cover an area of approximately 3 m², using 3x3 mm² pixel sensors and exceeding 300,000 readout channels, marking the first use of SiPMs for single-photon detection in a high-energy...
Heavy-ion collisions in the few-GeV energy range allow the creation of strongly interacting matter under extreme net-baryon densities, conditions which are comparable to the ones in neutron star mergers. The precise investigation of the Equation-of-State (EoS) of this kind of matter is therefore of high relevance for the understanding of neutron stars.
In this contribution, we present new...
Direct measurement of the 7Li(p, α)4He reaction at astrophysical energies using the ELISSA array has been performed at IFIN-HH with the 3 MV Tandem. This reaction is intimately linked with the so-called “Cosmological Lithium Problem”. The existing 7Li(p, α)4He direct measurement data suffer from large uncertainty, particularly at energies below 500 keV (in the center-of-mass system). Thus, a...
A self-consistent description of cluster emission processes in terms of nucleonic degrees of freedom is presented. The starting point is a Woods-Saxon mean field with spin-orbit and Coulomb terms where pairing is treated through standard Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer quasiparticles. A residual two-body interaction is introduced in terms of a density-dependent Wigner force having a Gaussian shape...
The neutron-deficient nuclides surrounding $^{100}$Sn, the heaviest doubly magic self-conjugate nucleus, presents a variety of fascinating nuclear structure phenomena. Key nuclear properties, such as atomic masses of exotic nuclei in this area, are crucial for assessing the stability of shell closures and the evolution of single-particle energy levels. Additionally, atomic masses also...
On Behalf of ALPHA Collaboration
CPT symmetry is a fundamental principle in the Standard Model of particle physics. Antihydrogen, the simplest atom of antimatter, is ideal for testing CPT invariance by comparing its properties with those, very well known, of hydrogen. The ALPHA experiment at CERN focuses on producing, confining, and studying antihydrogen. Antihydrogen is synthesized by...
The formation of short-range correlated nucleon-nucleon pairs (SRCs), primarily composed of neutron-proton pairs [1], appears to be a universal feature in atomic nuclei [2]. Interestingly, measurements in electron scattering indicate that protons become significantly more correlated in asymmetric nuclei as a function of neutron excess. This has potential implications for the description of...
A. Sharma$^1$, G. D'Amen$^2$, F. Bouyjou$^3$, O. Brand-Foissac$^1$, V. Chaumat$^1$, W. Chen$^2$, S. Conforti$^4$, T. Cornet$^1$, F. Dulucq$^4$, S. Extier$^4$, G. Giacomini$^2$, K. Hara$^5$, A. Ikbal$^6$, T. Imamura$^5$, M. Idzik$^7$, A. Jentsch$^2$, S. Kita$^5$, B.-Y. Ky$^1$, D. Marchand$^1$, J. Moron$^7$, K. Nakamura$^8$, S. Paul$^2$, P. Shanmuganathan$^2$, N. Seguin-Moreau$^4$, L. Serin$^1$,...
Recent experiments [Duer et al., Nature 606 (2022)] suggest a resonance-like structure in the $^8\text{He(p,p}\alpha\text{)4n}$ reaction. To investigate this, we analyze four-neutron point-creation using pionless effective field theory (EFT) within the Faddeev-Yakubovsky formalism, which enables a decomposition into the 2+2 and 3+1 channel. This is particularly relevant given that...
Well-bound spherical nuclei can be considered as closed quantum systems that can be described by state-of-the-art versions of the shell model, where nucleons occupy well-localized single-particle states. However, when we move towards the dripline or inject enough excitation energy into the system, the coupling to the continuum and reaction channels becomes more important, forcing the nucleus...
Complete isotopic fission-fragment distributions of 240Pu have been measured, for the first time, as a function of the initial excitation energy. The 240Pu fissioning system was produced through the two-proton transfer reaction between a 238U beam and a 12C target, a surrogate reaction for the neutron-induced fission 239Pu(n,f).
The reaction was measured in inverse kinematics, allowing the...
We investigate the finite-temperature equation of state (EOS) within an effective Lagrangian framework, where a dilaton field accounts for the breaking of scale symmetry in QCD. We start by extending a previous investigation in the pure gauge $SU (3)_c$ sector [1], describing the dynamics of the gluon condensate in terms of a dilaton Lagrangian. Below the critical temperature, the condensate...
The primary objective of the ALICE physics program is to investigate the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), the deconfined state of strongly interacting matter, and to understand how these properties emerge from the fundamental interactions governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD). By colliding heavy nuclei, the LHC generates quark-gluon plasma with record-breaking temperature and...
Proton therapy is widely recognized for its superior dose conformity and enhanced protection of healthy tissues compared to conventional photon-based radiotherapy, making it an increasingly valuable modality for treating complex cancers. However, fully realizing its potential is constrained by the computational demands of high-fidelity dose calculation and plan optimization. Although Monte...
A key step toward a better understanding of the nucleon structure is the study of Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs). GPDs are nowadays the object of an intense effort of research since they convey an image of the nucleon structure where the longitudinal momentum and the transverse spatial position of the partons inside the nucleon are correlated. Moreover, GPDs give access, via Ji's sum...
We discuss the current understanding of the heavy-ion fusion mechanism through the lens of multidimensional stochastic dynamics. Recent developments, including a six-dimensional Langevin formalism with unconstrained motion in mass asymmetry, provide a realistic description of energy dissipation, shape evolution, and angular momentum effects. This approach captures the transition into the...
Facilities that provide bright thermal neutron beams are crucial for a wide range of research areas, including condensed matter experiments, neutron imaging, and medical applications. Currently, these beams are primarily generated by spallation sources and nuclear research reactors. However, many of these facilities are aging, and the current political climate does not favor the construction...
The s-process is responsible for producing roughly half of the elements heavier than iron in the periodic table. While the dominant contribution to s-process nucleosynthesis in galactic chemical evolution (GCE) is typically attributed to the late evolutionary stages of low-mass stars, their long lifetimes make them unlikely sources for explaining the presence of heavy elements observed in the...
In this presentation, I will expose some of the latest developments in microscopic nuclear structure calculations from mid-mass to superheavy elements. In a first part, I will present developments and applications for the diagonalisation of shell-model hamiltonians in a Discrete Non-Orthogonal Shell Model (DNO-SM)[1] and its latest implementation DNO-SM(VAP)[2]. The method is based on...
Nuclear isomers, which are longer-lived excited states of atomic nuclei, emerge due to structural peculiarities that impede their decay processes. Advances in measurement techniques are revealing exotic isomeric properties, leading to an ample amount of data on isomeric states. This information is crucial for both fundamental research and interdisciplinary applications across industry and...
The ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is preparing for an upgrade during Long Shutdown 3 (LS3, 2026-2030), which includes replacing the three innermost layers of the Inner Tracking System (ITS2). The new ITS3 detector will introduce an innovative design featuring wafer-scale monolithic pixel sensors in 65 nm CMOS technology, thinned to 50 $\mu$m and bent into truly...
The accuracy (the bias) and precision (the uncertainties) of high-energy spallation models is a key issue for the design and development of new applications and experiments. In the case of the combination of the IntraNuclear Cascade model of Liège (INCL) [1, 2] and the Ablation model (ABLA) [3, 4], we address the problem through two orthogonal approaches, both based on a Bayesian...
The JYFLTRAP double Penning trap mass spectrometer at the Ion Guide Isotope Separator On-Line (IGISOL) facility offers excellent possibilities for high-precision mass measurements of radioactive ions. Using the new phase imaging technique (PI-ICR), ground and isomeric states can be separated, enabling independent measurements of their binding energies.
Accurate mass measurements of ground and...
Using e+e- annihilation in the tau-charm energy region, the BESIII experiment plays a key role in the spectroscopy of both hadrons made from the light up, down and strange quarks and of charmonium(-like) states.
World-record datasets on the J/psi and psi(2S) states allow for highly precise studies of glueball and hybrid meson candidates, whereas dedicated data above the open-charm threshold...
Understanding and predicting the evolution of nuclear structure and the novel phenomena in nuclei has long been a pursuit of scientific curiosity.
Conventional methods such as charged particle probes, $\beta$-decay, Coulombic-excitation, and heavy-ion fusion evaporation reactions have been employed so far in the phase space of Shell structure, magic numbers, angular momentum, and excitation...
To be added here
Neutron-induced fission reaction cross sections are crucial in various fields of nuclear science and technology. Experimental data from these reactions play a key role in understanding nuclear processes at high excitation energies, contributing to the development and refinement of models describing spallation, nuclear fragmentation, and binary fission. Moreover, accurate cross-section data are...
The existence of $^{298}$Fl, the center of the island of stability, has been predicted [1]. To synthesize this nucleus, it is necessary to produce a more neutron-rich compound nucleus than $^{298}$Fl, since the excited compound nucleus cools down by emitting neutrons.
According to this paper [2], the compound nucleus $^{304}$Fl exhibits some interesting mechanisms. One of them is the effect...
The Apparatus for Mesons and Baryon Experimental Research (AMBER, NA66) is a high-energy physics experiment at CERN’s M2 beam line, with a broad physics program extending beyond 2032. It includes studies on: antiproton production cross-sections on protons, helium and deuterium; the charge radius of the proton, and Kaon and Pion PDFs via the Drell-Yan process.
As part of medium- and long-term...
Bayesian optimization on FIFRELIN Monte-Carlo code to fit neutron and gamma multiplicities
Guillaume BAZELAIRE, Abdelhazize CHEBBOUBI, David BERNARD, Geoffrey DANIEL, Jean-Baptiste BLANCHARD*
CEA, DES, IRESNE, DER, SPRC, Cadarache, Physics Studies Laboratory, Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, 13108, France.
*Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, Service du Génie Logiciel pour la Simulation,...
The region of neutron-rich nuclei around N = 60 has attracted much interest throughout the years for its unique features, such as the very sudden onset of deformation appearing in several isotopes, precisely at N = 60. Studies of this phenomenon are of great importance in our understanding of shape evolution and shape coexistence [1]. The sudden inversion of weakly and strongly deformed...
The Equation of State (EoS) of nuclear matter is related to many topics in nuclear physics. In particular, it is crucial for understanding the structure of compact objects such as neutron stars. In the conservative hypothesis of a purely nucleonic composition of neutron star matter, the EoS is fully determined in terms of the so-called nuclear matter parameters (NMPs), which, in principle, can...
The GANIL (Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds) facility plays a crucial role in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and materials science by providing high-quality ion beams for cutting-edge research. A key component of these experiments is the production of high-quality targets, which are essential for obtaining accurate and reproducible results. With the development of the SPIRAL2...
Penning traps are widely used in high-precision mass spectrometry to determine atomic masses with exceptional precision and accuracy, playing a crucial role in atomic and nuclear physics research [1]. TRIGA-Trap is a high-precision, double Penning-trap mass spectrometer located in the reactor hall of the TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomic) research reactor in Mainz, Germany...
An important part of the physics programme of the COMPASS experiment at CERN consists in the measurement of transverse spin and transverse momentum effects in Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS) of high energy muons off unpolarised and transversely polarised nucleons.
In this talk, the most relevant new results on SIDIS off unpolarised protons and transversely polarised deuterons...
The neutron-induced reaction cross-sections for molybdenum, particularly the capture cross-sections, are relevant across various scientific fields, from nuclear astrophysics to nuclear technologies. Molybdenum isotopes are present as fission products in conventional nuclear reactors and its use is under study for potential applications in next-generation fission and fusion reactors....
Multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions between heavy ions at energies close to the Coulomb barrier have been identified as a powerful tool to populate neutron-rich nuclei in the regions of the nuclear chart close to $^{208}$Pb and in the actinides [1,2]. The same kind of reactions, but employing neutron-deficient projectiles, can also be envisaged to populate the region of static octupole...
Ion therapy employs protons and heavier ions (e.g., helium, carbon, oxygen) for cancer treatment due to their advantageous physical and biological properties, particularly effective against radio-resistant tumors. However, precise modeling of nuclear fragmentation processes, which critically influence dose distributions, biological effectiveness, and overall treatment accuracy—especially with...
The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) aims to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter at high baryon densities. It is designed to study heavy-ion collisions at beam energies of up to 11 AGeV using the SIS100 synchrotron. The CBM will explore collisions of high-intensity nuclear beams with thick fixed targets...
The total beta-decay half-lives of neutron-rich nuclei along magic neutron numbers remain largely unknown experimentally, while they are critical inputs for r-process simulations. In this talk, I will discuss our ab initio calculations for the half-lives of $N=50$ isotones. Starting from two- and three-nucleon interactions derived from chiral effective-field theory, we solve the many-body...
A new generation of 4H-SiC detectors has demonstrated the capability to operate at temperatures up to 450°C, offering excellent spectroscopic response and energy resolution (≲2%) [1]. This advancement paves the way for the development of silicon carbide detectors designed to measure suprathermal ions (He++ at 3.5 MeV) in extreme radiation and temperature environments, such as those expected in...
At present, the research into the synthesis of superheavy elements is being pursued under two main goals. One goal is to synthesize elements with larger atomic numbers, and the other is to reach Island of Stability predicted as the next double magic nucleus. The periodic table is currently marked up to element 118, Oganesson (Og) [1], and experiments are being conducted with the aim of...
Studying hadronization - the process by which quarks and gluons transition into hadrons -is fundamental to understanding the strong interaction dynamics within quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Using the CLAS12 detector at Jefferson Lab, the Run Group E (RGE) experiment offers unprecedented insights into hadronization in the nuclear medium. This talk will present preliminary results from the...
The $^{44}$Ti nucleosynthesis, alongside its characteristic gamma decay chain, is a good gamma tracer of Supernovae events. Specifically for Core Collapse Supernova (CCSN) explosions, the final process experienced by stars with initial mass greater than 8 M$_\odot$, where the nucleosynthesis takes place. Besides, the comparison between observations and models of the synthetized $^{44}$Ti in...
In recent years, significant advancements in CMOS silicon pixel detectors have led to their widespread adoption across various fields of physics, driving substantial progress in particle detection technologies. A notable example is the ALTAI chip, a CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor developed as part of the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) ITS sensor studies.
The ALTAI chip offers...
Exceptional points (EPs) are universal features of non-Hermitian systems, where at least two eigenvalues of an operator coalesce into a single eigenvalue, leading to several non-trivial effects like high sensitivity to parameter changes, unconventional behavior of resonances [1], unconventional time behavior [2], among others[3] . Though long studied in mathematical literature, EPs manifest...
Single-j calculations for $(j)^n$ configurations with n = 3,..,2j+1 can be performed using a semi-empirical approach, provided that the energies and absolute electromagnetic transition rates are known for the two-particle (hole) nucleus. This approach was already successfully applied in the case of protons in the $(\pi g_{9/2})^3$ nucleus $^{211}At$ [1]. At the Cologne Tandem Accelerator of...
Investigating the boundaries of the nuclear chart and understanding the structure of the heaviest elements are at the forefront of nuclear physics. The existence of the superheavy nuclei is intimately linked to nuclear shell effects which counteract Coulomb repulsion and therefore hinder spontaneous fission. In the region of heavy deformed nuclei weak shell gaps arise around $Z$=100 and...
This work explores the effects of dilution on the retention phenomena of radioactive atoms produced in the Szilard-Chalmers reaction, with a minimum level of gamma radiation coming from the Am-Be source. For the first time, we demonstrate that the 128-I extraction yield, after a sizable post-irradiation time, can be maximized with a suitable dilution. The origin of this curious effect is still...
The FAMU collaboration aims to measure the hyperfine splitting (hfs) of the muonic hydrogen in the ground state, contributing to the understanding of the proton magnetic structure. The Zemach radius of the proton can be estimated from the hfs measurement with an accuracy better than 1%.
The experiment is conducted at the ISIS facility of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) at the RIKEN...
The International Axion Observatory (IAXO) is a planned gaseous detector helioscope designed to detect axions, theorised to be dark matter candidates. A baseline detector prototype, IAXO-D0, is at present undergoing tests in Zaragoza. This prototype is sensitive to background high-energy neutrons that could induce false positive axion detections.
A neutron monitor has been proposed as a way...
In the last few years, we continued to study light multineutron systems [1] in bound states that were predicted by Migdal [2]. Such possibility, for at least the dineutron, is based on the theoretical substantiation that in the outgoing channel as the product of the nuclear reaction a bound system of two identical nucleons exists beyond the volume of the heavy core of the other nucleons of the...
A long time operation of Multi-Gap Resistive Plate Chambers with gas mixtures based on C$_2$H$_2$F$_4$ and SF$_6$ leads to aging effects reflected in an increase of the dark current and dark counting rate, with impact on the chamber performance. Moreover, the higher noise rate leads to an artificial increase of the data volume in a free-streaming data acquisition operation used in high...
Synthesis of neutron-rich nuclei is important for the study of Islands of Stability and r-process. However, to produce the neutron-rich nuclei in heavy mass regions will be limited by conventional fusion reactions. Therefore, in recent years, multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions have attracted attention as a method of producing neutron-rich nuclei [1]. However, the reaction mechanism is not...
The region around $^{32}$Mg has become a focus of nuclear structure studies due to the disappearance of the $N = 20$ shell closure, giving rise to a so-called island of inversion. As a result of multi-nucleon correlations, the isotopes in this region exhibit ground states dominated by $2p - 2h$ excitations into the $fp$ shell, deviating from the predictions of a harmonic oscillator potential...
The production of p-nuclei remains a significant open problem in nuclear astrophysics, representing one of the most challenging research frontiers in the field. The $\alpha$-nuclear potential serves as a critical parameter for modulating p-nuclei synthesis, being known as one of the key parameters to reduce uncertainties in the high atomic mass region of the p-process network. [1,2]
In...
Understanding the internal structure of nucleons remains one of the important challenges in hadronic physics. The measurement of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) from the neutron provides unique information on Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs), offering a three-dimensional picture of the neutron’s partonic structure. This talk will detail the extraction of the neutron DVCS...
Shape coexistence is a widespread phenomenon in the nuclide chart. Firstly identified in light nuclei, it has now been observed in several mass regions. Around the shell closure Z=50, shape coexistence has been clearly established in several isotopic chains, particularly in the tin and cadmium isotopes. Intruder states have also been identified in the palladium isotopes. Nevertheless, the...
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a rare nuclear process predicted by beyond-Standard Model theories, offering crucial insights into the nature of neutrinos and lepton number violation. A confirmed observation of 0νββ would establish the Majorana nature of neutrinos and provide constraints on their absolute mass scale. Among candidate isotopes, the decay of $^{136}\text{Xe}$ to...
The Axial-Vector Form Factor (AVFF) is so far largely unknown compared to the other form factors of the nucleon. Only its normalisation at $Q^2=0$ is experimentally well known from $\beta$ decay.
Most AVFF experimental knowledge at $Q^2>0$ is owing to $\nu$ quasi-elastic scattering on nuclei, and is therefore strongly affected by the determination of $\nu$ beam energy; low statistics; also...
The quest for an optical nuclear frequency standard, the ‘nuclear clock’ based on the elusive and uniquely low-energetic ‘thorium isomer’ $^{229m}$Th, has increasingly triggered experimental and theoretical research activities in numerous groups worldwide in the last decade. Today’s most precise timekeeping is based on optical atomic clocks. However, those could potentially be outperformed by...
Nuclear fission owes its name by the fact that, at the macroscopic level, it resembles the division of a living cell, with the nucleus slowly deforming until it breaks into two pieces. This a priori harmless split hides a complex re-arrangement of a many-body quantum system. The excited fragments emerging at scission quickly return to equilibrium by emitting neutrons and gamma-rays. As such,...
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a key process in understanding the fundamental nature of neutrinos and their role in the evolution of the Universe. Following the discovery of neutrino flavor oscillations, which demonstrated that neutrinos have mass, the search for 0νββ has become one of the most compelling challenges in contemporary particle physics. This talk will begin with an...
The presentation will begin with a concise overview of the key observational evidence constraining the properties of UHECRs, and why the evidence points to binary neutron star (BNS) mergers as their source. The main topic of the talk is predicting the spectrum and composition of UHECRs in the BNS merger scenario. It is possible to do this in unprecedented specificity thanks to the...
The In-Gas Laser Ionization and Spectroscopy (IGLIS) technique is a powerful tool to study atomic and nuclear properties of short-lived actinides [1]. Such studies are important to understand the atomic level scheme of these heavy elements, strongly influenced by electron correlations and relativistic effects. Laser spectroscopy in a collimated and low-temperature supersonic gas jet produced...
SpinQuest, a fixed-target experiment at Fermilab, studies the Drell-Yan process by utilizing transversely polarized NH₃ and ND₃ targets alongside an unpolarized 120-GeV proton beam. The primary goal is to measure single spin azimuthal asymmetries that arise from the correlation between the transverse momentum of the struck quark and the spin of the parent nucleon, referred to as Sivers...
More than a century after their discovery, galactic cosmic rays remain enigmatic — especially in terms of their astrophysical origins, their propagation through the interstellar medium, and their role in the nucleosynthesis of the light elements lithium, beryllium, and boron. Recent measurements of cosmic-ray composition and energy spectra have yielded valuable insights into these longstanding...
PARIS is an advanced gamma calorimeter designed for high-resolution nuclear spectroscopy, particularly in the study of exotic nuclear properties. The detector system is based on a phoswitch architecture combining high-efficiency scintillators such as LaBr_3(Ce)/CeBr_3 and NaI(Tl), offering good energy and excelent time resolution. The primary goal of PARIS is to enhance the detection...
Nuclear reactions are powerful to probe properties of exotic nuclei located away from stability. The accuracy of the information inferred from reaction measurements rely directly on the quality of the theoretical model used to analyze the experimental data. Reactions at intermediate energies are typically described within few-body models, which sees the reaction as composed of cluster of...
Ab initio calculations of atomic nuclei aim at describing their structure and reaction properties starting solely from the basic interactions between nucleons. In the past decade, thanks to developments in many-body theory and in the modelling of nuclear forces, ab initio techniques have steadily progressed and are now able to reach several tens of isotopes up to mass A~100, as well as...
The generation of the fission fragments spins is one of the least understood mechanism and its theoretical description has been subject to renewed interest following Wilson \textit{et al.} [Nature 590, 566 (2021)]. We report on a study of the radiative decay of fission fragments populated via neutronless fission of $^{252}$Cf(sf). In such rare events the fragments are populated below their...
The nuclear energy-density-functional (EDF) is a successful theoretical tool to describe many properties of a fissioning nucleus up to the generation of the primary fragments [1]. A core ingredient in the EDF-based many-body approaches is the Bogoliubov vacuum wavefunction. Expectation values of observables such as total binding energies or primary fragments mass are widely computed on...
To advance our understanding of the universe, from physics beyond the Standard Model to cosmic events, a unified approach to nuclear structure and reactions is essential. This requires combining few-body techniques with ab initio many-body calculations of nuclear structure, supported by Effective Field Theory and Uncertainty Quantification. Reaction rates derived from first principles are...
Due to its low excitation energy around 8.4 eV, the unique $^{229}$Th isomer is the ideal candidate for developing a nuclear clock [1]. Such a clock would be particularly suited for fundamental physics studies [1]. In the past, measuring the isomer’s radiative decay from a large-bandgap crystal doped with $^{229\mathrm{m}}$Th, has proven difficult: the commonly used population of the isomer...
The problem to discriminate between gamma-rays and neutrons is a long standing one and it was faced in the past using Time of Flight or PSD techniques as the charge difference technique.
The CLYC (Cs2LiYCl6:Ce) scintillator can easily discriminate between gamma-rays and neutrons induced events but, unfortunately, it has a too low density (only 3.3 g/cm3) and the decay time constant of the...
Heavy quarks (i.e. charm and beauty), produced in the early stages of high-energy hadronic and nuclear collisions through hard-scattering processes, serve as exceptional probes for investigating Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in extreme conditions and for rigorous perturbative QCD (pQCD) tests. Their large masses ensure that the heavy-quark production at the early stage is calculable within...
In the non-perturbative regime of Quantum Chromodynamics, the quark and gluon dynamics in a nuclear medium can be studied through the hadronization process. The deep inelastic electron scattering experiments are a clean way to liberate a bound quark from a nucleon in the medium and study the hadronization process. The E02-104 experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility...
The amount of fluorine in stars is a crucial indicator of the internal physical conditions and of the processes taking place within them, such as extra mixing in asymptotic giant branch stars. Also, it is a branching point in proton induced nucleosynthesis, since its proton radiative capture may lead to the synthesis of heavier nuclei (such as Ca in early stars). Recent extrapolated findings...
The second $0_{2}^+$ state of $^{12}$C at an excitation energy of 7.654 MeV, known as the Hoyle state [1], is crucial for understanding how $^{12}$C is formed in stellar nucleosynthesis. Despite extensive studies, the Hoyle state characteristics remain a challenging topic for nuclear structure theories: many theoretical models predict very different radii and spatial arrangements of this state...
A series of recent experiments to perform high resolution gamma ray spectroscopy of nuclear fission have been carried out with the ν-Ball2 spectrometer [1]. Nu-Ball2 is a state-of-the-art hybrid gamma-ray spectrometer that was developed and constructed at the ALTO facility of IJC Lab in Orsay. Several open questions are currently being addressed such as the evolution of evolution of fragment...
The detection of antimatter is primarily based on its annihilation, thus the understanding of the antiproton-nucleus ($\bar{\mathrm{p}}\mathrm{A}$) interaction is crucial. Despite its significance, current models - compared mainly to experimental results from LEAR - show deviations from low-energy measurements by large factors, suggesting that the annihilation mechanism is not yet fully...
We investigate the occurrence of $\alpha$ clustered states in $^{16}$O at high excitation energies by analyzing $^3$He + $^{13}$C reactions in the 1.4 - 2.2 MeV energy range. We produce refined angular distributions of the differential cross section in absolute units, allowing us to investigate the competition between the $\alpha$ decays leading to $^{12}$C in the Hoyle state and those leading...
Astronomical observations of neutron stars provide data on the kilometer scale, while the nuclear interaction, fundamental for neutron stars, works on the femtometer scale. To describe physical processes across so many orders of magnitude, one needs effective models. The inner crust of a neutron star is a complex system, where a lattice of nuclei strongly interacts with superfluid neutrons. In...
The neutron-rich region of the nuclear chart, around mass numbers A∼180−190, is of great interest for investigating nuclear shape transitions and isomerism in deformed nuclei. Isotopes like $^{183,184}$Hf are predicted to host long lived isomeric states and approach a prolate-to-oblate shape/phase transition, which is expected to result in prolate high-K isomers decaying to oblate low-K...
Understanding the phase structure of strongly interacting matter is a central goal in high-energy nuclear physics. Electromagnetic probes—such as photons and dileptons—offer a unique window into the space-time evolution of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and hadronic matter created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Unlike hadrons, these probes interact only electromagnetically and thus carry...
Most of the known hadrons in the low-energy QCD spectrum are resonances observed in multiparticle scattering processes. First-principles determination of the properties of these unstable hadrons is a major goal of lattice QCD calculations. Significant progress has been made in the development, implementation and application of theoretical tools that relate finite-volume lattice QCD quantities...
More than 80 years after its discovery, a complete description of the fission process remains a challenge. It is a many-body dynamic problem involving both microscopic and macroscopic aspects of nuclear matter. To further understand the fission process, new experimental data on exotic fissioning systems that cannot be probed using direct neutron-induced fission are needed. Moreover,...
The study of nuclear fission remains a critical area of research, not only for understanding fundamental nuclear properties but also for its implications in the production of heavy elements in astrophysical environments. In r-process nucleosynthesis, fission barriers play a crucial role as they ultimately limit the mass of nuclei that can be produced. Currently, very limited data on fission...
Beta decay of fission products is at the origin of decay heat and antineutrino emission in nuclear reactors. Decay heat strongly impacts reactor safety since it is about 7% of the nominal reactor power during operation and the only power after reactor stop. Reactor antineutrino detection is used in several fundamental neutrino physics experiments and it can also be used for reactor monitoring...
Nuclear shape coexistence is essential for exploring the microscopic origins of nuclear deformation [1-4].
The Ca isotopic chain between the two shell closures at N=20 and N=28 is an optimal test
area that can provide key insights into this phenomenon [5-7].
The aim of this work is to perform complete low-spin spectroscopy of even-even $^{42,44}$Ca and odd-even $^{43,45}$Ca isotopes,...
The HADES (High-Acceptance Di-Electron Spectrometer) detector is a versatile device operating at SIS18 synchrotron at GSI Darmstadt with a vital list of results in the elementary and heavy ion collisions. It combines unique capability of dileptons and hadrons identification. HADES provides a unique platform for investigating elementary reactions, with a particular focus on the strangeness and...
The third decadal review of solar fusion cross sections (SF-III) is based on a community consensus formed in a workshop in July 2022 in Berkeley with 50 participants representing many of the groups active in the field. It is now available online (https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06470 , and Rev. Mod. Phys. in press).
I will present a nuclear physics based perspective on the SF-III recommended...
Due to high Q-values and low neutron separation energies, β-decay of neutron-rich nuclei can often populate neutron unbound states in the daughter nuclei, and close to the dripline, β-delayed multi-neutron emission becomes possible. Decay schemes are commonly studied via neutron time-of-flight (TOF) spectroscopy using modular arrays based on organic scintillators.
In principle, the use of...
Charm production measurements at fixed-target energies at the LHC offer unique opportunities for hadronisation studies sensitive to the beam remnants, constraints on parton distribution functions of the proton and the nucleus including intrinsic charm as well as studies sensitive to deconfinement in nucleus-nucleus collisions.
LHCb pionneered charm production measurements in proton-nucleus...
Neutron-neutron correlations, specifically in light exotic systems such as two-neutron halo nuclei, is a topic that has attracted a revived interest [1,2]. These correlations are known to play a key role in binding the Borromean system [3,4], thus shaping their properties and dynamics in nuclear collisions. The particular features of these nn correlations extend beyond the driplines and may...
The fission process is strongly determined by both the nuclear structure and the nuclear dynamics, which drives the system from its initial state to final break-up through various stages of extreme deformation. The resultant fission fragments, along with the neutron evaporation emerge as promising parameters for elucidating the underlying mechanisms governing the fission process. The VAMOS++...
TRIUMF's Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear science (TITAN) specializes in high-precision measurements and isobaric separation of exotic nuclei using advanced electromagnetic traps. These precise mass measurements are crucial for investigating nuclear structure and studying astrophysical processes involving isotopes far from the valley of stability.
TITAN’s Multiple-Reflection Time-of-Flight...
As unexpected as it may seem, the past few years revealed that it is possible to ascribe a well-defined meaning to the notion of proton internal pressure, to identify several associated observables that can be measured in contemporary experiments and from them to extract this internal pressure in a theoretically controlled manner. The conceptual breakthrough originates from the definition of...
Cadmium isotopes have been thought to be prime examples of nearly harmonic vibrational nuclei. However, recent studies have started depicting a much more complex picture of their structure, highlighting the possibility of multiple shape coexistence. In particular, advanced beyond-mean-field calculations performed for the 110,112Cd isotopes predict a prolate ground state coexisting with three...
The physics of neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay has important implications on particle physics, cosmology and fundamental physics. It is the most promising process to access the effective neutrino mass. To determine quantitative information from the possible measurement of the 0νββ decay half-lives, the knowledge of the Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) involved in the transition is...
Charmonium, a bound state of a charm and an anticharm quarks, represents a valuable tool to investigate the properties of the quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD). In particular, charmonium production mechanism involves both perturbative (heavy quark pair production) and non-perturbative (hadronization into the final quarkonium state) aspects, making it an important test ground for the theoretical...
The study of the Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) is a focal point of hadron physics since they provide rich information about the inner structure of nucleons. Experimentally, measurements of the Compton Form Factors (CFFs) via the Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) process is the simplest approach to access GPDs.
The DVCS experiment in Hall C at the Jefferson Lab was conducted...
A. Di Pietro$^1$, N. Szegedi$^1$, P. Figuera$^1$, S. Cherubini$^{1,2}$,M. La Cognata$^1$, L. Guardo$^1$, M. Gulino$^{1,3}$,L. Lamia$^{1,2}$, A. Oliva$^1$, G. Pizzone$^{1,2}$, G. Rapisarda$^{1,2}$, R. Sparta'$^{1,3}$, M.L. Sergi$^{1,2}$, D. Torresi$^1$, A. Tumino$^{1,2}$, T. Davinson$^4$, N. Duy$^5$, J.P. Fernandez Garcia$^6$, S. Heinitz$^7$, S. Hayakawa$^8$, E.A. Maugeri$^7$, M. Milin$^9$, H....
Lanthanum ($Z = 57$) and lutetium ($Z = 71$) serve as ideal candidates to study proton-emission effects. Lutetium proton-emitting isotopes, showing oblate deformations, are positioned near the $N = 82$ shell closure while lanthanum proton-emitting isotopes, which exhibit significant prolate deformation, are located far from any shell closures. Comparing these two cases helps disentangle...
The Bellotti Ion Beam Facility (IBF) [1] is located in the deep underground site of Laboratori del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Italy. The facility is named in honor of Enrico Bellotti, the first director of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Italy, who initiated the first installation of an underground accelerator for the study of nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest, following a...
Scattering in three-nucleon systems at intermediate energies atracts attention due to sensitivity of the observables to subtle effects of the dynamics beyond the pairwise nucleon-nucleon force, so-called three nucleon force (3NF). Recently, the data for nucleon-deuteron collisions have also been considered as a tool for fine-tuning of the 3N Hamiltonian parameters in Chiral EFT. Deuteron...
Quarkonia are bound states of a heavy quark and an antiquark of the same flavor. In pp collisions, such heavy quark masses require the quark pair to be produced in high-energy scatterings of partons in the colliding protons; once the quark and the antiquark are created, their binding into quarkonium states involves large spatial separations and low momentum scales. The whole production...
Our understanding of stellar evolution has greatly advanced thanks to the synergy between observation, stellar modeling, and nuclear physics. Nuclear reaction rates are fundamental inputs in stellar models, making their study essential for addressing key questions in nuclear astrophysics. Two main experimental approaches are used to determine cross sections: direct measurements and indirect...
The shape coexistence phenomenon was investigated in the Sn isotopes region around A=110, by means of $\gamma$-ray spectroscopy and lifetime measurements of low-spin states. Recent observations of prolate axially deformed $0^+$ states in $^{64,66}$Ni isotopes, with a strongly hindered decay to the first $2^+$ excited state of spherical nature (shape-isomer-like excitations), were reported ...
The exploration of neutron-deficient isotopes in the vicinity of the Z = 100 shell gap, offers valuable insight into the nuclear structure and the boundaries of stability for nuclei with extreme neutron-to-proton ratios. To investigate the limits of stability and also the effects of the single-particle states on the decay modes of these nuclei, the neutron-deficient isotopes of mendelevium...
Chiral effective field theory ($\chi$EFT) promises a systematic approach to describe the force between nucleons as arising from the fundamental principles of quantum chromodynamics. A power counting (PC) quantifies the relative importance of different contributions in the $\chi$EFT expansion. The PC ensures that the EFT predictions of observables show order-by-order convergence, which in turn...
Quarkonium production has long been recognized as a key probe for exploring the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Among various observables, azimuthal anisotropies in quarkonium production offer valuable insights to investigate its collective behavior in a strongly interacting medium. In particular, the measurement of $\rm{J}/\psi$ elliptic flow ($v_2$) in Pb–Pb collisions at the LHC...
Giant monopole resonances, and in particular the nuclear breathing mode, play a central role in constraining the incompressibility of nuclear matter - an essential parameter in the nuclear equation of state. Traditionally, these modes have been studied within the Random Phase Approximation (RPA) using phenomenological Energy Density Functionals (EDF), establishing a well-known framework for...
Spectroscopy based on nuclear transfer reactions has been a workhorse for the investigation of nuclear structure for decades and motivated the construction of many high-resolution spectrometers around the world. However, extending this approach to reactions in inverse kinematics, required for most radioactive beams, comes with a loss of resolution due to kinematic compression and kinematic...
The LHCb experiment at CERN employs a general-purpose forward spectrometer designed to study heavy flavour physics at the LHC. The acceptance of the spectrometer covers the pseudorapidity range 2 < η < 5 and provides full tracking and particle identification down to very small transverse momenta. This makes LHCb also ideal to study hadronic interactions similar to those that occur in extensive...
Recent advances in hadron therapy, particularly proton and carbon ion therapy, are reshaping the landscape of cancer treatment by offering increased precision, reduced toxicity, and expanded clinical indications. Technological innovations in beam delivery systems, adaptive treatment planning, and real-time imaging have significantly enhanced dose conformality while minimizing exposure to...
ALTO (Accélérateur Linéaire et Tandem à Orsay) is the two-accelerator research platform of IJCLab (alto.ijclab.in2p3.fr). The first is a 15 MV Tandem accelerator which produces a wide range of heavy ion beams, from proton up to gold. ALTO is also unique in its capacity to provide high-flux naturally directional neutron beams with the LICORNE neutron converter in inverse kinematics. The second...
The electromagnetic structure of baryons, parametrized in terms of electromagnetic form factors (EMFFs), provides a key to understanding quantum chromodynamics effects in bound states. While spacelike form factors for the proton and neutron are accessible through the elastic electron scattering, the most viable option for unstable hadrons is the timelike EMFFs. Recently, precise measurements...
J. Stricker(1, 2), K. Gaul(1,2), L. M. Arndt(1), Ch. E. Duellmann(1, 2, 3), D. Renisch(1,2), J. Velten(1) and the TACTICa Collaboration(1, 2, 3). (1) Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany. (2) Helmholtz Institute Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany. (3) GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany.
Trapped atomic and molecular actinide ions are...
Neutron-induced reactions on Copper are of great relevance for both nuclear technologies and astrophysics. Copper is a key structural material in the TAPIRO research reactor, which plays a crucial role in validating nuclear data and materials for fast Generation IV reactors. Recent sensitivity and uncertainty studies on TAPIRO have highlighted the need for improved Copper cross section data...
Helium burning is a crucial phase for stellar evolution, playing a key role in the production of elements like carbon, oxygen, and fluorine, which significantly impact the chemical evolution of the Universe.
Precise measurements of nuclear reaction rates at helium-burning astrophysical energies are challenging and essential for constraining stellar models and understanding nucleosynthesis...
The observation of neutrinoless double beta (0$\nu\beta\beta$) decay would have profound implications on the field of neutrino physics, giving key insights into multiple questions simultaneously. It would prove the existence of a lepton number violating process, determining if neutrinos are Majorana particles as well as constraining the overall mass hierarchy and the absolute mass scale of the...
The fission process forms highly excited fragments carrying significant amounts of angular momentum. This formation is generally described via a shape evolution on the potential energy landscape of the fissioning system. Among the aspects that are still hard to describe in this process is the generation of the fragment angular momenta, highlighted by the work of Wilhelmy et al. in the early...
Introduction
Conventional radiotherapy (CONV) delivers a radiation treatment dose in order of minutes, resulting in dose rate of about 2 Gy/min. However, multiple recent preclinical studies demonstrated substantial healthy tissue sparing effect if the ultra-high dose rate, FLASH (> 40 Gy/s), is employed instead. At the same time, radiobiological effect on tumor remains unchanged. However,...
The isospin symmetry is a consequence of the charge-independence of the nucleon-nucleon nuclear interaction. However, the Coulomb interaction breaks the isospin symmetry. Despite the small size of the isospin breaking, it is fundamental to know its value in the best possible way to understand the properties of the isobaric analog state and its role in Fermi $\beta$ decay.
In the case of...
The status of several CLAS12 semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering measurements sensitive to TMDs, including several new results from a 10.5 GeV longitudinally polarized electron beam incident on a longitudinally polarized target, will be discussed. These measurements will be placed into context of the global study of TMDs with a particular focus on areas where CLAS12 and other fixed target...
Carbon burning is the third stage of stellar evolution, influencing the fate of both massive stars and low-mass stars in binary systems.
Stellar carbon burning primarily occurs through the 12C(12C, α)20Ne and 12C(12C, p)23Na reactions. While these reactions have been studied over a wide energy range, direct measurements below 2.1 MeV (the astrophysical range) are lacking. Indirect data, such...
The main goal of FOOT is to measure double differential fragmentation cross sections of light elements (Z $\le$ 10) in the energy range of 100–1000 MeV/nucleon, of interest both in medical and space-related fields. Particle Therapy is a medical treatment that uses charged particles with a tuned Bragg Peak to maximize the dose to tumors while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. However, ion...
The existence of the three flavours of neutrinos, electron, muon and tau neutrino, predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics has been experimentally proven decades ago. Contrary to the Standard Model however, neutrino oscillation experiments [1] have shown that they are massive particles, making neutrino mass measurements a gateway to physics beyond the Standard Model. As these...
The production of a neutron beam with suitable energy and angular distributions is fundamental for different scientific applications and particularly for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT). Nowadays, two accelerator based nuclear reactions are studied and used worldwide as BNCT neutron sources: $^7$Li(p,n) and $^9$Be(p,xn).
The former is commercially available but is affected by important...
I will present part of the results recently obtained by studying the radiative decay of fission fragments populated in 252Cf(sf). Fission fragments were detected and their kinetic energies measured using a twin Frisch grid ionization chamber. This compact detector was surrounded by an array of 54 large volume NaI detectors. For the particular event without neutron emission, the fragments' mass...
The response of atomic nuclei to external, harmonically oscillating electric fields, i.e., their photoresponse [1], is dominated by their isovector Giant Dipole Resonance (GDR). The existence of the GDR is known for almost a century [2]. Although it is often considered as the archetype of a collective nuclear mode, a variety of fundamental questions to its very nature is still unanswered: What...
An experimental program has been approved at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to measure the (ep,e’K+)Y reactions to study the spectrum and structure of excited nucleon states. New data from CLAS12 on πN, ππN, and KY electroproduction have been obtained using electron beams with energies of 6.5 and 7.5 impinging upon a liquid hydrogen target. Scattered electrons have been...
Nuclear fragmentation cross section measurements hold significant importance in both hadrontherapy and space radioprotection. Hadrontherapy is an external radiation therapy that employs beams of protons and heavier ions to target deep-seated tumors. These particles exhibit a favorable depth-dose distribution in tissues, featuring a low dose at the entrance and a maximum release at the end of...
The advent of novel cryogenic sensors is opening up new paths in the search for Beyond Standard Model physics, promising to shed light on open questions such as the neutrino mass scale and even fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. Searches in nuclear beta decays are at the forefront of new physics searches in the electroweak sector, and several efforts are currently ongoing to take...
This work conducts a thorough Bayesian analysis of neutron star matter, incorporating $(\Delta)$-resonances alongside hyperons and nucleons within a density-dependent relativistic hadron (DDRH) model. By leveraging constraints from nuclear saturation properties, chiral effective field theory ($\chi$EFT), NICER radius measurements, and tidal deformability data from GW170817, we systematically...
The pygmy dipole resonance (PDR) refers to a low-lying strength in the dipole response of nuclei, located around the neutron separation energy [1] and associated with neutron excess in nuclei. As of today, the available experimental data do not provide an accurate picture of the fine structure of the PDR. These open questions on its structure and its potential implications on neutron...
A general description of the fission mechanism considers both microscopical quantities, such as nuclear structure of the fission fragments, and macroscopic effects, like the Coulomb repulsion between the nuclei. The interplay between both quantities prevents, so far, from a fully microscopical description of the interaction. Despite the development of different theoretical models [1] and...
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the theoretical framework to study hadrons by means of their fundamental degrees of freedom, i.e. quarks and gluons, collectively referred to as partons. QCD defines many types of distributions describing a given hadron in terms of partons. For the purposes of this talk, we are interested in the so-called generalized parton distributions (GPDs) which are...
The FALSTAFF spectrometer [1], designed to detect fission fragments produced in direct kinematics, is a key tool in advancing the understanding of neutron-induced fission, particularly in the MeV energy range. Fission models, both phenomenological and microscopic, have seen significant development over the past decade. However, their ability to accurately predict fission observables such as...
Corrected transition rates ($Ƒt^{0^+ → 0^+}$ values) of superallowed $0^+ → 0^+$ beta decays have served as a benchmark for validating the conserved vector current (CVC) hypothesis in weak interactions. They now provide the most precise value of $V_{ud}$, the dominant top-row element of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix. By imposing stringent constrains on the CKM...
The 25Al(p, γ)26Si reaction plays a crucial role in the production of the 26Al radioisotope in the Galaxy. To accurately model the thermonuclear reaction rates for the production of 26Al in astrophysical environments, spectroscopic information about the nature of the states (Iπ , Ex ,..) close to the proton threshold is needed. Theoretical calculations predict three resonances in 26Si with Iπ...
Since 2018, CYCLHAD has been engaged in treatments, research and development activities in proton therapy. Operating a single cancer treatment room using a Proteus®One commercial superconducting synchrocyclotron from IBA company, CYCLHAD is going to broaden its offer. A new milestone is currently underway to enable expanded heavy ions like carbon ion therapy capabilities by 2028, promising...
Studying nuclear fission provides insight into the interplay between the dynamic evolution of the compound nucleus and microscopic effects such as shell structure and pairing correlations. Measuring fission fragment yields not only advances our understanding of nuclear structure but also has important applications in nuclear reactor physics.
This work focuses on the evolution of fission...
N.S. Martorana1, G. D’Agata1,2, A. Barbon1,2, G. Cardella1, E. Geraci1,2,3, L. Acosta4,5,6, C. Altana6, A. Castoldi7, E. De Filippo 1, S. De Luca6, P. Figuera6, N. Giudice1,2, B. Gnoffo1,2, C. Guazzoni7, C. Maiolino6, E.V. Pagano6, S. Pirrone 1, G. Politi 1,2, L. Quattrocchi1,8, F. Risitano1,8, F. Rizzo2,3,6, P. Russotto6, G. Sapienza6, M. Trimarchi1,7, S. Tudisco6, C. Zagami...
The Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB) of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Kraków is a proton therapy center built in the previous decade, where in addition to therapy, the proton beam is used for scientific research. One of the first measurements performed at the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB) were studies of collective excitations induced using...
Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) are probability functions describing spatial and momentum distributions of partons in nucleon structure studies. They are crucial for understanding the correlation between the longitudinal momentum and the transverse position of partons inside the nucleon. The Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) is a privileged channel for GPD studies, as...
The Carbon-11 nucleus plays an important role in first start nucleosynthesis patterns [1] as a composite of the reaction $^{10}\mathrm{B}(p,\alpha)^{7}\mathrm{Be}$, which act in the hot pp-chains [2] by back processing material branching across the mass $A = 5$ and $A = 8$ mass gap towards $^{10}\mathrm{B}$. The $^{11}\mathrm{C}$ resonances $J^\pi = 5/2^+_2$ and $J^\pi = 7/2^+_1$, 10 keV above...
Quasi-fission (QF) and fusion fission (FF) are two competing processes that affects formation probability of Super Heavy Element (SHE). To optimize the exploration of the SHE landscape, it is important to understand the competition between QF and FF. Several experiments are being carried out by us [1-2] to understand the dynamics of QF and FF, particularly to understand the role of entrance...
Tests of CKM unitarity are a rigorous tool for constraining possible extensions of the Standard Model. The top-row CKM unitarity test--at the current precision level, a simpler two-flavor Cabibbo unitarity--relies on a combination of kaon, neutron and superallowed nuclear decays. The latter presently give the most precise value of $V_{ud}$ and lead to an apparent 2-3$\sigma$ unitarity deficit....
Stretched resonances are rather simple nuclear excitations, even though in light nuclei they appear in the continuum energy region. The structures of these states are dominated by a single particle-hole component for which the excited particle and the residual hole couple to the maximal possible spin value available on their respective shells. The simplicity of their configurations results...
In this talk, a new open-source solver for the nuclear Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) equations will be presented. This solver uses a double set of HO solutions as its basis, allowing an accurate description of highly elongated nuclear states using a relatively small number of basis states. The implemented nucleon-nucleon effective interactions are of D1x, D2x Gogny types. The solver is written...
The knowledge of absolute nuclear charge radii has a significant scientific impact, from testing nuclear theories to beyond standard model physics. The absolute charge radii of almost all stable isotopes were extracted till the late 1990s, using the muonic atom spectroscopy method. In this method, a negatively charged muon beam is shot on target, the muon stops and is captured at a high...
The low energy fission in the actinide region is known to be mainly asymmetric, driven by structure effects of the nascent fragments. Moreover, we know that there is a transition from asymmetric to symmetric splitting for Thorium isotopes. It was assumed that this latter split would be the main fission mode for lighter nuclei. However, unexpected asymmetric splits have been observed again in...
The vibration and rotation modes shed light on collective properties of nuclei. The rotational level patterns in $^{220}$Rn and $^{226}$Ra nuclei have been obtain in a collective quadrupole+octupole approach with microscopic mass tensor and moments of inertia dependent on deformation and pairing degrees of freedom. However, the main objective is to quantitatively confirm the known experimental...
An experimental search for a bound dineutron has been ongoing for decades, presenting the experiments for light and heavier nuclei masses as target nuclei. Our approach to indirectly observe a bound dineutron is based on the theoretical prediction by Migdal [1] and considers not light, but heavier nuclei in nuclear reactions, near which a bound dineutron can be formed in the outgoing channels...
The spectroscopic quadrupole moment ($Q$) is a fundamental property that provides information about nuclear deformation. However, its precise extraction for the transition elements remains challenging due to their complex atomic structures. Meanwhile, muonic atoms offer a simpler hydrogen-like structure with amplified hyperfine interaction effects. Recent efforts have revived this technique,...
This research is the field-theoretical description of the deuteron breakup by fast electrons, being a prolongation of the studies carried out [1] at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics & Technology. As in our recent works [2,3], key features of the approach proposed embody gauge-independent calculations of the reaction amplitudes, as well as, a fresh look at the construction of the one-nucleon...
There are two common approaches for calculating cross-sections for weak probes: one involves using square-integrable basis functions [1-5], while the other relies on response functions (dynamical polarizabilities) [6]. For multi-open-channel problems, all methods struggle to some extent. Considering these issues, we develop a powerful novel alternative which takes advantage of the randomness...
Precision measurements in beta decay play an essential role in the search for new physics beyond the standard model (SM) by probing “exotic” phenomena such as scalar and tensor interactions. The presence of these interactions would lead to deviations in specific observables from their SM predictions. The study of the full beta energy spectrum offers a sensitive mean to probe these exotic...
Nuclear beta decay and electron capture allow us to probe the Standard Model (SM) and search for new physics in competitive and complementary ways to the LHC. In particular, beta decay can be extremely sensitive to exotic scalar and tensor currents at the TeV scale through precision measurements. This sensitivity shows up most clearly in the Fierz interference term, b_F, which is linearly...
The study of nuclear reactions involving light nuclei at low incident energies is essential for the development and corroboration of different theories and models applied to astrophysical environments [1,2]. The experimental Basic Nuclear Physics (FNB) line, installed at the 3 MV tandem accelerator of the National Accelerators Center (CNA), is being adapted and prepared to study these kinds of...
One of goals of hypernuclear physics is to obtain information on baryon-baryon interaction in a unified way. Especially, it becomes an important issue to obtain information on hyperon(Y)-nucleon(N) interaction. For this purpose, hyperon-nucleon scattering experiments are planned at JLab and J-PARC facilities [1].
The physics of strangeness $S=-1$ hypernuclei bears a fundamental difference...
V. Marchand$^{1}$, W. Dong$^{1}$, S. Franchoo$^{1}$, T. Hourat$^{1}$, David Lunney$^{1}$, V. Manea$^{1}$, E. Minaya Ramirez$^{1}$, E. Morin$^{1}$, S. Roset$^{1}$.
$^{1}$Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, IJCLab, 91405 Orsay, France
The GANIL accelerator complex in Caen, France recently commissioned a new superconducting linear accelerator as part of the SPIRAL2 facility. This...
The investigation of nuclei near the proton shell closure at (Z = 82) remains a vibrant field of research, as these nuclei exhibit a rich interplay of shapes driven by shape coexistence, and proton-neutron interactions. In the (A $\sim$ 190) mass region, odd-odd thallium (Tl) isotopes serve as an exemplary testing ground where both symmetric oblate and triaxial configurations have been...
The Standard Model (SM) of electroweak interactions relies on key assumptions, such as the vector and axial-vector nature of the weak force, parity violation, and the masslessness of neutrinos, which were initially inferred from neutron beta decay. Nowadays, precision experiments with slow neutrons are involved in searches of physics beyond SM (BSM). The BRAND experiment is one of them. It...
Brunilde Gnoffo a,b, Sara Pirroneb , Giuseppe Politi a,b, Enrico De Filippob , Giuseppe Cardellab , Elena Geraci a,b, Concettina Maiolinoc , Nunzia Simona Martoranab , Emanuele Vincenzo Paganoc , Massimo Papab, Fabio Risitano d,b, Francesca Rizzoa,c,e, Paolo Russottoc , Marina Trimarchid,b, Cristina Zagamia,c,e
A Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia ”Ettore Majorana”, Universita...
In the last decade, the ab-initio self-consistent Gorkov Green’s function (SCGGF) [1,2] approach has marked a step forward in the knowledge of bulk nuclear properties of even-even open-shell nuclei, such as the ones lying along the Ar-Cr isotopic chains [3,4]. The access to the one-particle propagator has allowed the study of ground and excited states of neighbouring odd-A isotopes...
Recent Monte Carlo Shell Model (MCSM) calculations made by T. Togashi et. al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 062501 (2018)] attempt to account for discrepancies observed between measurements and previous theoretical calculations of the reduced transition probability B(E2;$2^{+}_{1} \rightarrow 0^{+}_{1}$) in the neutron deficient Sn isotopes. One of the predictions of the MCSM calculation is that a...
The idea of the capability of nuclei to emit two alpha particles simultaneously dates back to the late 1970s, inspired by the concept of two-proton radioactivity. Subsequently, observation of the exotic decay was considered unfeasible due to the extremely low branching ratio, which was calculated to be on the order of $10^{-20}$ or less. Recent theoretical work by Mercier et al. (PRL...
The synthesis of superheavy nuclei (SHN) with heavy ion collisions is modelled as a three staged model: capture, formation and survival, where this presentation explores the first two stages. Starting from the model in [1], the memoryless Brownian random walk was replaced by a Markov chain approach yielding significantly faster calculations which was then used to determine the cross...
Proton-induced fission of $^{232}$Th and $^{238}$U at tens-of-MeV energies has been studied. This type of reactions is commonly used in the isotope separation on-line (ISOL) technique, which provides high-quality and intense rare isotope (RI) beams. This work aims to estimate RI beam yields for application at RAON, Korea's heavy-ion accelerator. A stochastic model based on the Langevin...
The region surrounding the doubly magic nucleus $^{100}$Sn, particularly on the proton-rich side beyond the (N=50) shell closure, provides a crucial test ground for modern nuclear structure models. It offers access to fundamental phenomena such as isospin symmetry breaking, nucleon pairing, shell evolution, and the influence of the tensor force and Wigner energy [1]. Despite its importance,...
Motivated by the doubly magic nature of the system $^{16}$O + $^{48}$Ca, we have measured [1] its fusion excitation function from above to far below the barrier at the Laboratori Nationali di Legnaro of INFN. We have used the $^{16}$O beams from the XTU Tandem accelerator. The fusion cross sections were measured down to a few μb by identifying the evaporation residues in a detector telescope,...
The observation of double-beta decays and double-electron captures have become an important tool in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). These decays have been proposed to decay by emitting either two neutrinos or no neutrinos. While the two neutrino mode has been observed [1], the proposed neutrinoless decay mode requires the neutrino to be its own antiparticle (a Majorana...
The multi-configurational dynamical symmetry (MUSY) serves as a unifying framework that links the fundamental structure models of atomic nuclei: the shell, collective, and cluster models [1, 2]. It constitutes a composite symmetry where each configuration possesses a usual [U(3)] dynamical symmetry and an additional symmetry that connects these configurations among themselves. As a consequence...
Pablo González Rusell for the R^{3}B collaboration
The atomic nuclear structure is still one of the most complex problems in modern physics. This is due to the fact that many-body correlations beyond the symmetries of the nucleon-nucleon potential leads to the existence of a large number of nuclear systems whose properties differ significantly from what can be expected based on the simple...
In the neutron-proton interacting boson model (IBM-2) [1], the SU*(3) limit appears, which has a triaxial nature. It was first clarified by A.E.L. Dieperink and R. Bijker [2] with group theory and with coherent state analysis. This triaxiality has been also suggested from the correspondence between shape variables ($\beta, \gamma$) and SU(3) irrep label ($\lambda, \mu$) by Ref. [3]. Moreover,...
Laser spectroscopy for studying the ground and isomeric state properties of exotic nuclei has established itself as a versatile and powerful tool, with the capabilities of providing access to nuclear model-independent data about charge radii, electromagnetic moments and spins [1]. Part of this achievement is owed to the possibility of having narrow-bandwidth (60 MHz), high power and tunable...
The nuclear level density (NLD) represents the number of accessible energy states in a nucleus at a given excitation energy and is vital for modeling nuclear reactions and decay processes. At lower excitation energies, NLD is significantly enhanced by collective effects, rotational and vibrational motions, which are prominent in deformed nuclei. This phenomenon, referred to as collective...
The neutron dripline in oxygen isotopes presents a clear challenge and unique opportunity for studies of shell evolution and nuclear structure. The heaviest observed bound isotope of fluorine ($Z=9$) has 22 neutrons, whereas oxygen -- with only one fewer proton, $Z=8$ -- can only bind 16 neutrons. This striking anomaly is a result of an increase in the spacing between the ν($d_{3/2}$) orbital...
The isotope $^{229}$Th is of particular interest due to its exceptionally low-energy isomeric state ($\sim$ 8.2 eV), which can be studied via vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) spectroscopy, and holds great potential for the development of a nuclear clock [1,2].
Understanding this isomer’s properties, including its excitation and decay modes, is hereby essential and involves investigating the nuclear...
Fission is one of the most complex reactions. The mass asymmetry of the fission fragments depends on the shell structure of the fissioning nucleus. It is generally believed that mass-asymmetric fission disappeared due to the annihilation of the shell structure in high excitation energy. Recently, however, fissioning over a wide range of excitation energies has been experimentally observed by...
In our previous studies, possible and statistically significant observations of a bound dineutron in nucler reactions with fast neutrons on 159Tb [1] and 197Au [2] nuclei was investigated, that coincides with the Migdal’s and Dyugaev’s [3, 4] predictions about bound dineutron existence. To directly observe the decay of bound dineutrons, the estimation of half-life and the end-point energy for...
Halo nuclei are exotic nuclear structures found far from stability near the dripline. Unlike stable nuclei, halo nuclei exhibit a large matter radius. This peculiar feature is the result of their strongly clusterised structure. They can be seen as a compact core to which one or two valence neutrons are loosely bound. Due to the quantum tunnel effect, they exhibit a high presence probability at...
The future Electron Ion Collider (EIC) will offer a unique opportunity to explore the parton distributions
inside nucleons and nuclei thanks to an unprecedented luminosity, a wide range of energies, a large choice of nuclei
and polarization of both beams.
The electron Proton-Ion Collider collaboration (ePIC) detector will be capable of precise determination
of the position of primary...
A few years ago, our group has developed anew method for measuring doses in ultra high dose rate charged particle beams, based on multivolume ion chambers - the QUADDRO detector. The measurement, however, did not account for the energy of the particles in the beam and such a measurement was done using radiocheromic films pklaced axially in the beam.
While performimg energy measurements in 10...
The study of delayed emissions in proton-rich nuclei provides valuable new insights into nuclear structure and enables the investigation of open quantum systems. We present a comprehensive analysis of the resonant Gamow states of 20Na, populated via the β⁺ decay of 20Mg, with particular focus on the decay widths associated with the proton emission process. Moreover, by employing several...
The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a central hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The TileCal plays an important role in the reconstruction of jets, hadronically decaying tau leptons, missing transverse energy, in the muon identification and provides information to the dedicated calorimeter trigger. This sampling calorimeter is composed by the plastic scintillating tiles and...
This study introduces an innovative method for characterizing the nuclear equation of state (EOS) through the analysis of central heavy-ion collisions within the Fermi energy range. We examine experimental data from Nickel-Nickel and Xenon-Tin collisions at energies of 32–100 MeV/nucleon, collected using the INDRA 4π array at GANIL. By leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine...
Plasma-assisted CO$_2$ dissociation has been widely studied for in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) on Mars, where it is used to generate oxygen and fuel from the Martian CO$_2$-rich atmosphere. On Earth, the process has been explored for carbon capture and utilization, where CO$_2$ is utilized to produce valuable fuels and chemicals. Its application to space propulsion, however, is nearly...
Collisions of heavy-ions at relativistic energies provide an essential tool to study the behavior of strongly interacting matter at elevated temperature and density.
In the regime of few GeV per nucleon, quark deconfinement does not occur, but a non-trivial dynamics of the system is driven by moderate temperatures (few tens MeV) and baryon densities (2-3 nuclear saturation density), which...
This application serves as an audit tool for sensitive sites using nuclear or radioactive materials. It evaluates their physical protection systems through expert-formulated questionnaires tailored for each organizational category. It provides privileges to users as administrators (experts) or standard users (site managers) and facilitates information exchange between them. The application...
The MORA project [1] aims to measure the D correlation in nuclear beta decay with high precision to look for CP violation, using a transparent Paul trap and laser orientation techniques. It is currently located at JYFL (Finland), using a 23Mg beam provided by the IGISOL facility. MORA will next be moved to the DESIR experimental hall (GANIL, France) to perform decay measurements using both...
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) reveals its complexity at large distances and low energies. Understanding the internal structure of the nucleons is therefore essential for a complete understanding of QCD in this regime. Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) play a crucial role in this effort, as they provide a means to map both the spatial and the longitudinal momentum distributions of partons...
Though the origin of most of the nuclides lighter than iron is now quite well understood, the synthesis of the heavy elements (i.e. heavier than iron) remains puzzling in many respects. The major mechanisms called for to explain the production of the heavy nuclei are the slow neutron-capture process (or s-process), occurring during the hydrostatic stellar burning phases, the rapid...
We describe laser spectroscopy of the 1S-2S transition in trapped [1] and laser cooled [2] antihydrogen to 13 significant figures [3] and a lineshape theory [4] for its analysis. This is an order of magnitude improvement over our last results [5]. We discuss the extension of the methods to allow spectroscopy of hydrogen in the same apparatus as proposed in [6] and with a proof-of-principle...
There are approximately 300 stable and 3,000 known unstable (rare) isotopes. Estimates are that over 7,000 different isotopes are bound by the nuclear force. It is now recognized that the properties of many, sometimes undiscovered, rare isotopes hold the key to understanding how to develop a comprehensive and predictive model of atomic nuclei, to accurately model a variety of astrophysical...
CHRISP is the Swiss Research Infrastructure for Particle Physics at PSI. The High Intensity Proton Accelerator complex HIPA provides a beam of 590 MeV protons at 50 MHz from its ring cyclotron to targets. The beam with an average current of up to 2.4 mA, corresponding to 1.4 MW average beam power, simultaneously serves nuclear and particle physics experiments with pions, muons and ultracold...
An overview is given of the current nuclear data libraries which are used for nuclear technology, in particular nuclear energy. These nuclear data libraries are filled with fundamental nuclear reaction and nuclear structure data, coming from a mixture of measurements and nuclear model calculations, and are used in Monte Carlo or deterministic application codes for the analysis of nuclear...
Understanding the internal structure of the nucleon remains a fundamental challenge in nuclear and particle physics. Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD) provides a rigorous, first-principles framework to study key nucleon properties, including parton distributions, form factors, and moments of generalized parton distributions. Recent advancements in computational algorithms, renormalization...
Relativistic heavy-ion collisions are essential to advancing our understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) under extreme conditions of temperature and density. These experiments recreate the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of matter that dominated the early universe, providing critical insights into the emergent phenomena of QCD such as strangeness enhancement and collective particle...
The nuclear interaction problem can nowadays be addressed within the systematic framework of effective field theories, rooted in the underlying quantum chromodynamics through its approximate and dynamically broken chiral symmetry. Nevertheless, despite tremendous progress, long-standing discrepancies between theory and experiment persist in the A=3 continuum, most notably the so-called Ay...
Searches for signatures of new physics involve many probes, in particular at low energies, beyond those accessible at high-energy colliders. Those searches also include charged current processes such as nuclear beta decay and electron capture.
In this presentation, I will review current efforts searching for new physics in nuclear beta decay and I will retrace the progress achieved so far in...
On behalf of the ePIC collaboration.
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a next-generation facility to explore quantum chromodynamics (QCD) by colliding polarized electrons with polarized protons and heavy ions. The ePIC detector at the EIC will study the 3D structure of nucleons, the spin-momentum correlations of quarks and gluons, and the emergent properties of dense gluon fields. Leveraging...
From the observation of oscillations, neutrinos are known to have a mass. However, it remains an open question as to how large that mass is. One way of determining the neutrino mass is the investigation of weak decay kinematics. Especially suited is the beta decay of tritium, mainly due to its simple structure, high activity, and comparatively low endpoint value.
KATRIN, the Karlsruhe...
Researches on nuclear reactors, both for optimization of current generation or for study of next generations, require simulations. Indeed, reactor operation parameters, fuel burning, waste production, etc. can be studied by simulation with Monte Carlo or deterministic codes. These codes simulate the fundamental interaction of nucleons or ions with the matter and use as inputs nuclear data like...
First stars played a key role in shaping the chemical evolution of the universe, acting as the earliest sites of nucleosynthesis beyond the Big Bang. Yet, key aspects of their nuclear burning processes—particularly the formation of CNO nuclei from primordial material—remain among the long-standing puzzles in nuclear astrophysics.
Recent studies suggest that previously overlooked reaction...
Loosely bound nuclei are currently the focus of interest in low-energy nuclear physics. The deeper understanding of their properties, provided by the open-shell model for quantum systems, changes the understanding of many phenomena and opens new horizons for spectroscopic studies of nuclei from the drop lines to the $\beta$-stability valley, as well as for states near and above the particle...
Many-body Green's functions stands out among microscopic theories for its capability to encapsulate infromation on ground state properties, response and single particle spectroscopy within the same framework. Different aspects of the many-body correlations and dynamics of a given nucleus can then be investigated simultaneously with the same microscopic approach.
The first part of the talk...
The evolution of nuclear shell structure in exotic nuclei provides key insights into the fundamental nature of nuclear forces. In nuclei far from stability, conventional magic numbers can disappear, while new ones may emerge, a phenomenon known as shell evolution [1]. A well-known example is the evolution of the N=28 shell gap from $^{40}$Ca to $^{48}$Ca, which has been successfully explained...
Conventional accelerators, which use radio-frequency fields, can only reach maximum acceleration field strengths on the order of 1 MV/cm [1], resulting in large footprints and high associated costs, especially for low-energy (MeV range) applications. In contrast, laser-driven accelerators have consistently reached acceleration field gradients on the order of GV/cm to TV/cm, rendering them a...
Multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions are a promising method for producing neutron-rich heavy exotic nuclei. Many facilities around the world are studying this process to better understand the reaction mechanisms involved, as well as the competing mechanisms using specific projectile/target combinations [1].
The gas-filled recoil separator RITU [2] at the Jyväskylä Accelerator Laboratory...
As a Swedish in-kind contribution to FAIR, the storage ring CRYRING@ESR was delivered to GSI in 2014, assembled in the following years and commissioned in 2018. With a relatively compact circumference of 54 m and the maximal magnetic rigidity of 1.44 Tm, CRYRING is suitable for precision experiments with highly charged ion beams at low energies. It consists out of 12 sections, including...
The pygmy dipole resonance (PDR) is commonly associated with an excess $E1$ strength on top of the low-energy tail of the giant dipole resonance (GDR) close to the neutron-separation energy in stable and unstable heavy nuclei. While its detailed structure, properties, and origin remain a matter of ongoing debates and research, the neutron-skin oscillation picture of this feature still prevails...
One of the best-known divergences from the independent-particle shell model description of the atomic nucleus is the existence of islands of inversion (IoI) [1]. The N=40 IoI draws particular interest, as 40 was postulated as a non-traditional “magic” number, however, later experimental measurements of B(E2) values and E(2+) energies indicated enhanced collectivity through the N= 40 shell gap,...
Understanding stellar nucleosynthesis remains a forefront challenge in physics and relies on detailed knowledge of helium burning, whose pivotal triple-$\alpha$ and $^{12}\mathrm{C}(\alpha,\gamma)^{16}\mathrm{O}$ reactions set the carbon–oxygen balance in stars. This talk will present recently published precision data on the triple-$\alpha$ reaction and a new direct measurement of...
The astrophysical p-process is the crucial mechanism responsible for the synthesis of a sub-set of proton-rich isotopes, known as p-nuclei, which cannot be produced by the s- and r-processes. Despite the several astrophysical environments considered in the literature [1-3] photodisintegration reactions are identified as the dominant mechanism for the production of these rather weakly naturally...
L. Corradi1, S. Szilner3, G. Andreetta1,2, E.Fioretto1, A. Goasduff1, A. Gottardo1, A. M. Stefanini1, J. J. Valiente-Dobón1, F. Angelini1,2, M. Balogh1, D. Brugnara1, G. de Angelis1, A. Ertoprak1, B. Gongora Servin1, A. Gozzelino1, T. Marchi1, D.R. Napoli1, J. Pellumaj1, R.M. Pérez-Vidal1, M. Sedlak1, D. Stramaccioni1,2, L. Zago1,2, I. Zanon1, P. Aguilera4, J. Benito4, S. Carollo2,4, R....
The construction of the DESIR facility at GANIL-SPIRAL2 is almost completed and soon the installation of the experimental setups will start. The experimental hall will feature state-of-the-art setups for decay and laser spectroscopy, as well as trap-based experiments. With the beams produced at SPIRAL1 and S3, DESIR will provide unique opportunities for high-precision low-energy nuclear...
In this contribution recent results obtained at the ISOLDE DECAY STATION (IDS) are discussed, together with an insight on future perspectives.
In addition, the new physics opportunities opening up at the upcoming SPES ISOL facility at LNL (Italy) will also be presented, underlying the complementarity of the two facilities.
Octupole correlations near $N = Z = 56$ are unique in the sense that they occur between particles in the same orbitals for both neutrons and protons. In this region just above $^{100}$Sn, it is expected that enhanced octupole correlations will take place at low and medium spins in the light Te ($Z = 52$), I ($Z = 53$), and Xe ($Z = 54$) nuclei [1]. In this region of the nuclear chart, the...
The new PID equipment of the Super-FRS [1], presently under construction at FAIR, was qualified using SIS18 beams (C, Ag, U) delivered at different energies 400-1000 MeV/nucleon.
The absence at GSI of a beam line suitable to be equipped with Super-FRS vacuum detectors, due the large acceptance in momentum of the Super-FRS, enforced to install the first equipped Super-FRS diagnostic chamber in...
Only a handful of the most energetic reactions involving the most abundant elements are driving the evolution and chemical structure of massive stars. Among these, the fusion of two carbon nuclei is a key process during the late stages of the evolution such stars, in explosive nucleosynthesis in Type 1a supernovae and superbursts in x-ray binary systems [1]. The precise measurement of the...
In nuclear reactions induced by low-energy charged particles, atomic electrons can participate in the process by screening the nuclear charge and so, effectively reducing the repulsive Coulomb barrier. Consequently, the measured cross section is enhanced by an effect called electron screening. There are several theoretical models, based on a static approach, describing this effect. However, in...
The Pandya relation connects the interaction between two particles (or two holes) with the interaction between a particle and a hole [1], and follows from the action of the particle-hole conjugation operator in the context of the shell model [2]. The relation has been used extensively to correlate spectra of pairs of nuclei, for example 40K and 38Cl [3]. Many other examples are known...
The advent of new facilities for radioactive ion beams mainly rich in neutrons, like SPES @ LNL, FRAISE @ LNS and FAIR @ GSI only to give some examples, imposes the joint detection and discrimination of neutrons and charged particles in Heavy radioactive Ion collisions, with high angular and energy resolution. The construction of novel detection systems suitable for this experimental task is...
GANIL facility was upgraded with a superconducting linear accelerator, which delivers highly intense stable beams. Light ions are used at the Neutron for Science (NFS) experimental hall [1] and heavier ions are essential to produce exotic nuclei, like heavy neutron-deficient isotopes and super heavy nuclei, in the Super Separator Spectrometer (S3) [2, 3].
By combining the intense heavy ion...
The ISOLDE Superconducting Recoil Separator (ISRS) [1] is an innovative high-resolution recoil separator aiming to extend the physics program of HIE-ISOLDE by using gamma-particle correlations and decay spectroscopy at the focal plane detector. The objective of the ISRS´s theory group is to predict direct and compound-nuclei production for selected nuclear reactions, aiming to optimize the...
To meet the sustainable development goals of the United Nations we have to transform our global economy into energy-smart, sustainable, cyclic societies. The materials we nowadays employ for storage and conversion of energy but also for regulation of energy transport are commonly complex compound systems often containing light chemical elements such as hydrogen, lithium or oxygen, either...
S. Szilner1, L. Corradi2, T. Mijatović1, F. Galtarossa3, G. Pollarolo4, E. Fioretto2, A. Goasduff2, G. Montagnoli3, A. M. Stefanini2, G. Colucci5, J. Diklić1, A. Gottardo2, J. Grebosz6, A. Illana7, G. Jaworski5, T. Marchi2, D. Mengoni3, M. Milin8, D. Nurkić8, M. Siciliano9, N. Soić1, J. J. Valiente-Dobón2, N. Vukman1
1Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia
2Istituto Nazionale di Fisica...
Stopping power (SP) refers to the rate at which a charged particle loses energy as it moves through a medium; however, it is substantially different between ordinary (cold) and plasma matter. As a consequence, a precise determination of SP in plasmas is essential for nuclear astrophysics [Ber04, ADGL99] and energy production [LP93, ZZZ+22], because it plays a central role in determining...
The production and abundances of neon and sodium isotopes in massive stars, novae and supernovae is strictly connected to the cross section of proton reactions with Ne isotopes. In particular, the 21Ne(p,γ)22Na reaction has a relevant role in the production of the radioactive isotope 22Na in novae and supernovae. At T~0.1-0.7GK, the main contributions to the stellar rate are provided by...
The nuclear equation of state (EoS) plays a key role in many different aspects of modern physics, being fundamental for understanding the structure of nuclear matter, the properties of neutron stars, and the synthesis of heavy elements. While the properties of proton-neutron symmetric matter are relatively well known, the study of asymmetric matter via properties of neutron-rich nuclei became...
The PANDORA (Plasmas for Astrophysics, Nuclear Decay Observation and Radiation for Archaeometry) facility aims to investigate the variation of nuclear and atomic properties inside a laboratory magnetoplasma emulating some aspects of the stellar interior [1]. The main goals of the facility are to use an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion trap to measure β-decay rates and optical opacities...
The nuclear electromagnetic moments provide an essential information about the structure of the state of interest. They are very stringent tests to the nuclear theory. The magnetic dipole moments are especially sensitive towards the single-particle properties of the nuclear wave functions while the electric quadrupole moments give an insight to the nuclear deformation and...
Light nuclei are found in core-collapse supernova matter and in binary neutron star mergers. Their abundance can affect the dynamics and properties of supernovae [1-3] and binary neutron star mergers [4-8], both directly through their weak reactions with the surrounding medium, and indirectly through their competition with heavy nuclei [9], which can modify the proton fraction and the size of...
The (n,alpha) cross-sections on oxygen 16 and fluorine 19 are of great interest for the improvement and/or development of the nuclear reactors. Significant differences have been observed for those nuclei regarding the (n,alpha) channel:
- on oxygen 16, discrepancies up to 30% between experimental data and/or evaluation are observed and are responsible for an uncertainty of 100 pcm on...
The miniTRASGO is a compact, cost-effective secondary cosmic ray detector optimized for studies in solar activity, cosmic rays, and atmospheric physics. Based on Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs), it provides stable detection rates and high sensitivity. This was demonstrated by its successful measurement of Forbush Decreases in March and May 2024 at the Madrid station, which, at the time, hosted...
Most of the heaviest nuclei synthesized in recent decades have been obtained using fusion-evaporation reactions. Due to neutron evaporation and the limited choice of beam-target combinations, this mechanism tends to produce mainly neutron-deficient nuclei. In addition, the cross-sections are often small, e.g. 0.5 pb at most for the discovery of 294Og [1]. Multi-Nucleon Transfer (MNT) reactions...
The seniority scheme assumes that the low lying states in a nucleus can be described considering one single orbital, and there is no seniority mixing. The aim of the present paper is to test the validity of this, by focusing on the reduced B(E2) transition strengths, considered to provide more stringent test of the wave function than the excitation energies.
The largest amount of...
The Chromium isotopic chain sits half-way in between the magic Ca and Ni isotopic chains and displays the highest level of collectivity of the region [1]. Going from the N = 28 shell closure to the center of the N = 40 Island of Inversion 64Cr, drastic structural changes are observed along the Cr isotopic chain, driven by a complex interplay of single particle and collective behaviors that...
Atoms of different chemical elements possess spectra that serve as their unique fingerprints. Our knowledge of their spectra has allowed the identification of heavy elements in extragalactic stars, and even in neutron star mergers where half of the elements are thought to be produced.
Till date, very little is known about the atomic structure of the heaviest elements, which can only be...
Neutron stars are the most compact objects in the Universe. The core of these extremely compact objects has such high densities that it reaches regions of the QCD phase diagram that are still unknown. In this work we explore the possibility of deconfined quark matter inside neutron stars. For this purpose, we generated eight sets of hybrid equations of state. For the hadron phase, we used the...
The p-process was first proposed as a solution to the formation of proton-rich heavy nuclei between Se and Hg that cannot be produced via the r- and s-processes. The p-nuclei are typically 10-1000 times less abundant than isotopes formed through the r or s-processes, making the study of their reaction cross-sections fundamental for improving current nucleosynthesis models [1]. In this work, I...
In the last decade, SiC-based detectors have emerged as strong candidates for next-generation particle detection. This is due to several advantageous properties of the material, including its high breakdown field, high saturation velocity, wide band-gap, radiation hardness, strong mechanical resistance, and thermal stability [1–3]. Additionally, SiC has been proposed as a promising solution...
Abstract: The accurate determination of reactor antineutrino spectra remains a very actual research topic for which interrogations have emerged in the past decade. Indeed, after the “reactor anomaly” (RAA) [1] – a deficit of measured antineutrinos at short baseline reactor experiments with respect to spectral predictions – the three international reactor neutrino experiments Double Chooz, Daya...
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in exotic nuclear shapes and accompanying symmetries in low energy subatomic physics, both from theory and experimental points of view. We are going to address theoretical calculations employing realistic nuclear structure Hamiltonians to provide trustworthy predictions of the still unknown quantum mechanisms; new concepts are also...
The appearance of a subshell closure in $^{56}$Cr (N=32) is confirmed by the high excitation energy of the 2$_{1}^{+}$ state and the B(E2;2$_1^+\rightarrow$0$_1^+$). Shell model calculations are able to reproduce the energy of the first 2$^+$ state but not the drop of collectivity at N=32 for the Cr isotopes.
The discrepancy between the experimental data and the theoretical calculations for...
Neutron capture reactions play an important role in nuclear astrophysics as they are at the base of the s-process and the r-process, the two main mechanisms of nucleosynthesis beyond the iron peak.
Neutron capture cross sections are therefore important inputs of stellar models. Their accurate knowledge is crucial to predict reliable stellar yields and isotopic abundances that, compared with...
The study of reactions involving weakly bound exotic nuclei is an active field due to advances in radioactive beam facilities. Many of these nuclei can be approximately described by a model consisting of an inert core and one or more valence nucleons. However to properly describe some of these nuclei within few-body models, additional effects must be considered, such as deformations and...
FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) is an international accelerator facility under construction at the site of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt.FAIR will deliver a wide range of intense primary and secondary beams at relativistic energies, including radioactive beams of all elements and, in a later stage, antiprotons.
The existing GSI accelerators...
The ab initio method in nuclear theory can be interpreted as a systematically improvable approach for quantitatively describing nuclei using the finest resolution scale possible while maximizing its predictive capabilities. In this talk, I will highlight some recent developments in ab initio nuclear structure calculations, focusing on the use of Bayesian methods for uncertainty quantification....
The ellipsoidal deformation of nuclear shapes has been one of the central questions of
nuclear structure physics. Fully microscopic approaches with a wide range of possible
relevant correlations have been naturally difficult. Just recently, such approaches became
feasible by using the Monte Carlo Shell Model [1], particularly by its most advanced version
Quasiparticle Vacuua Shell...
Human activities—whether nuclear (civilian and military) or industrial processes involving naturally radioactive materials (oil and gas production, phosphate mining, and rare earth extraction)—have released and redistributed radionuclides across environmental compartments. This contamination could threaten ecosystems and human health, with risks driven by the persistence, concentration, and...
In this talk, I will review the unique place the Sun has as a fundamental laboratory for astrophysics and related fields. I will put the emphasis on current open questions and, in relation to them, on the need for accurate measurements of key nuclear reaction cross sections.
A rich spectrum of giant resonances of different multipolarities and spin and isospin structure was expected on theoretical grounds. In the nineteen seventies, the isoscalar giant quadrupole resonance (ISGQR) was discovered in electron scattering followed by the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) in inelastic $\alpha$ scattering. In the last five decades, the compression modes the...
The magnetic dipole scissors mode and its implications for the low-energy structure of heavy nuclei are discussed. Salient features like its orbital nature, the correlation of the strength with ground-state deformation, the collectivity and a systematic description within a sum-rule approach are reviewed [1]. The scissors mode is also observed in the quasicontinuum and may be related to the...
Infinite nuclear matter lies at the crossroads of nuclear physics investigations, as it connects the microscale of nuclei and the macroscale of compact celestial bodies. On the one hand, nuclear matter properties can be partially constrained by finite nuclei observables and astrophysical observations. On the other hand, nuclear matter can guide the development of both ab initio nuclear...
The radioisotope thorium-229 features a nuclear isomer with an exceptionally low excitation energy of ≈ 8.4 eV and a favorable coupling to the environment, making it a candidate for a next generation of optical clocks allowing to study fundamental physics such as the variation of the fine structure constant [1,2].
While first indirect experimental evidence for the existence of such a nuclear...
