Speaker: Michael Gennari (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany)
Title: An Ab-initio Formalism for Modelling General Electroweak Processes in Light Nuclei
Abstract: Measurments of superallowed nuclear beta decays provide the most precise determination of up-down quark mixing and thus give way to a stringent test of CKM unitarity, yet their correct interpretation depends on small, nuclear-structure-dependent radiative corrections. In this talk, I will present a generalized framework for calculating the relevant hadronic-structure dependent correction, the nuclear gamma-W box contribution, based on the no-core shell model and Lanczos moments method. Applied to the 10C to 10B transition, the radiative correction is found to be highly sensitive to low-lying nuclear structure. This work yields a more precise correction than previous phenomenological estimates and establishes a systematically improvable connection between nuclear many-body theory and precision tests of the Standard Model. Works on 14O to 14N, total muon capture rates, and charge-radius extraction from muonic atoms are presently underway.
Speaker's biography: Dr. Michael Gennari is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Nuclear Physics and PRISMA++ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He received his Bachelor of Mathematics in Honours Mathematical Physics with Co-operative Education from the University of Waterloo in 2019 before pursuing his Master's and Ph.D. at the University of Victoria. His graduate research was carried out through TRIUMF under the supervision of Dr. Petr Navrátil with a focus on ab initio nuclear many-body theory, the electroweak structure of nuclei, and effective field theory. During his doctoral studies, he performed one of the first ab initio calculations of the nuclear gamma-W box correction relevant to precision determinations of the up-down CKM matrix element, Vud. His dissertation was recognized with the Canadian Association of Physicists Division of Nuclear Physics Award for Best Doctoral Thesis. His current research continues to explore the interplay between nuclear structure and fundamental interactions through first-principles theoretical methods, with an emphasis on precision electroweak observables and their role in tests of the Standard Model.
