The experimental search for the existence of a tetra neutron state has a long history, and the situation remained unclear until recently, and a possible explanation of our experimental finding is still open. On the theoretical side, large efforts have been undertaken as well recently, with results and predictions scattering over wide range in energy, including the prediction for the...
The AGATA (Advanced GAmma Tracking Array) $\gamma$-ray array [1] has been celebrating its first ten years of data taking all over Europe. Thanks to its unprecedented position and energy resolution combined with state-of-the-art complementary instrumentation, AGATA has allowed to pave the way towards high precision spectroscopy measurements in exotic nuclei, thus providing a wealth of...
Accelerators for nuclear physics research span a wide parameter range in beam energy and intensity. We provide an overview of the existing and planned accelerators, design considerations, performance limitations and technology developments that enable future machines.
A review of the present status of silicon tracking and vertexing systems and their future developements will be presented. We will show themodern detectors used in present day experiments both in nuclear and elementary particle physics, and the achieved results. Then show the near-future systems which are now being designed, built, or commissioned. And in conclusion an outlook on the future...
Since their invention in the 1930s, particle accelerator science has led to major discoveries and advancements in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, and other fields. Progress in accelerator-based experimental physics has always been linked to improvement of detector technology. Rare isotope (RI) beam facilities are now important tools for nuclear physics. The Facility for Rare Isotope...
In 2017, a multimessenger era started with the first gravitational wave detection from the merger of two neutron stars (GW170817) and the rich electromagnetic follow-up. The most exciting electromagnetic counterpart was the kilonova. This provides an answer to the long-standing question of how and where heavy elements are produced in the universe. The neutron-rich material ejected during the...
By combining two unique facilities at GSI (Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research),
the fragment separator (FRS) and the experimental storage ring (ESR), the first direct measurement of a proton capture reaction of a stored radioactive isotope has been accomplished. The combination of sharp ion energy, ultra-thin internal gas target, and the ability to adjust energy of the beam in the ring...
Nuclear fusion reactions are the heart of nuclear astrophysics: they sensitively influence the nucleosynthesis of the elements in the earliest stages of the Universe and in all the objects formed thereafter; control the associated energy generation and neutrino luminosity; influence the evolution of stars. LUNA (Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics) is an experimental approach for...
The spectrum of hadrons is composed of bound states of quarks and gluons. The distinctive property of confinement in strong interactions, which are described by Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD), prevents quarks and gluons from appearing as free particles. A new generation of dedicated experiments in hadron physics has been proposed with the aim of uncovering properties of strong interactions and...
Understanding Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at large distances remains one of the main outstanding problems of nuclear physics. Investigating the internal structure of hadrons probes QCD in the non-perturbative domain and can help unravel the spatial extensions of nature's building blocks. Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) is the easiest reaction that accesses the Generalized Parton...
The status of lattice hadron spectroscopy will be discussed. In recent years there has been significant progress in calculations of the properties of exotic and conventional hadronic resonances and an overview of the challenges as well as the prospects for future studies will be presented.
The quest for finding the origins of cosmic rays has been going on for many decades. Cosmic rays as charged particles react to cosmic magnetic fields and therefore travel in diffusive motion through the Universe. Their imprint on Earth therefore has little information on their original direction so that finding the sources of cosmic rays is a major challenge and the question of their origins...
I give an overview of the several anomalies appearing in neutrino oscillation experiments. I will briefly discuss the LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies and the recent results from the MicroBooNE experiment before turning, in the main part of the talk, to the reactor antineutrino anomaly and the Gallium anomaly. I will discuss these two anomalies in some detail and, in particular, compare their...
Recent results connected to nuclear collision dynamics, from low up to intermediate energies, will be reviewed.
Direct reactions can carry important information on yet unknown aspects of the nuclear effective interaction, relating to the excitation of isospin and spin-isospin modes.
Dissipative heavy ion reactions offer the unique opportunity to probe the complex nuclear many-body dynamics...
There are two fundamental kinds of excitation modes in the atomic nucleus: collective and single-particle excitations. So far, most of the theoretical effort has focused on the study of the former and the latter has been mostly treated by using the quasiparticle spectrum of neighboring nuclei [1] or the equal-filling approximation [2]. However, these approaches explicitly neglect time-odd...
Nuclear fission is a rich laboratory for studying structural, dynamical and statistical properties of nuclei. It is also highly relevant for understanding the origin of heavy elements in stars. In addition, fission is a powerful source of energy and therefore also very important for industry and society.
One of the most important fission quantities is the fission barrier as it defines the...
I will review the theoretical status of heavy ions at collider energies with especial attention to those aspects more phenomenological relevant for the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The new advances in the understanding of thermalization, the properties of the produced quark gluon plasma or the relevant of hard processes as jets or quarkonia will be considered both for large and small systems.
One of the major areas of high-energy physics is the study of nuclear matter under extreme conditions. At high temperatures and/or high net-baryon densities, a state of strongly-interacting matter, the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), in which quarks and gluons are no longer confined in hadrons, is formed. This state of matter existed just a few microseconds after the Big Bang and might exist in the...
Experiments based on ultra-relativistic collisions of heavy ions are pursued in several facilities. At CERN, all large experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) participate in the heavy-ion programme and also plan corresponding upgrades. Further experiments are carried out and planned at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). At RHIC, data taking with sPHENIX will commence shortly. At FAIR,...
The weak interaction is predicted to give rise to slightly different structures for left and right-handed chiral molecules, contrary the common conception that enantiomers are perfect mirror images. The consequences range from the nulling of the tunnelling rate in chiral molecules to a possible seed of homo-chirality in the chemistry of life. We are building a new experiment aimed at observing...
The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility – Demo Oriented Neutron Source (IFMIF-DONES) is a research infrastructure for irradiation the materials to be used in a fusion reactor. The facility would provide a unique neutron source of energy spectrum and flux level representative of those expected for the first wall containing future fusion reactors. Its construction is close to be...
By the improvements of the accelerators, ion sources, ion lenses and detectors, high energy focused ion beams are becoming a powerful tool for chemical imaging in life science.
Micro-Proton-Induced X-ray Emission (micro-PIXE) became a technique of choice for tissue elemental mapping in the cases, where high elemental sensitivity, high lateral resolution and quantitative nature of the...
Different studies have shown the high potential of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) 14C dating in forensics sciences where high chronological resolution (annual or even sub annual) is mandatory on samples typically younger than one hundred years ca. In this field, radiocarbon dating is based on the detection of the excess of the atmospheric radiocarbon concentration induced by aboveground...
Very detailed nucleon-nucleon (NN) and three-nucleon (3N) interactions have been constructed and applied to describe bound and scattering states in few-nucleon systems. They are based on chiral perturbation theory. At the same time the shallow character of the deuteron (S=1) state and the virtual 1S0 states allows for an effective description in which the pion degrees of freedom have been...
