We calculate the nuclear matrix elements of the neutrinoless double beta ($0νββ$) decays of $^{76}$Ge and $^{82}$Se for the light-neutrino exchange mechanism. The nuclear wave functions are obtained by using realistic two-body forces within the proton-neutron quasiparticle random-phase approximation (pnQRPA). We include the effects that come from the finite size of a nucleon, from the higher-order terms of nucleonic weak currents, and from the nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations. Most importantly, we improve on the presently available calculations by replacing the rudimentary Jastrow short-range correlations by the more advanced unitary correlation operator method (UCOM). The UCOM corrected matrix elements turn out to be notably larger in magnitude than the Jastrow corrected ones. This has drastic consequences for the detectability of $0νββ$ decay in the present and future double beta experiments.
A new improved quark mass density-dependent model including u, d quarks, $σ$ mesons, $ω$ mesons and $ρ$ mesons is presented. Employing this model, the properties of nuclear matter, neutron matter and neutron star are studied. We find that it can describe above properties successfully. The results given by the new improved quark mass density- dependent model and by the quark meson coupling model are compared.
We present new nuclear matter calculations based on low-momentum interactions derived from chiral effective field theory potentials. The current calculations use an improved treatment of the three-nucleon force contribution that includes a corrected combinatorial factor beyond Hartree-Fock that was omitted in previous nuclear matter calculations. We find realistic saturation properties using parameters fit only to few-body data, but with larger uncertainty estimates from cutoff dependence and the 3NF parametrization than in previous calculations.
The improved quark mass density-dependent (IQMDD) model, which has been successfully used to describe the properties of both infinite nuclear matter and finite nuclei, is applied to investigate the properties of quark deconfinement phase transition. By using the finite-temperature quantum field theory, we calculate the finite temperature effective potential and extend the IQMDD model to finite temperature and finite nuclear matter density. The critical temperature and the critical density of nuclear matter are given and the QCD phase diagram is addressed. It is shown that this model can not on…
Recent improvements to the Cascade-Exciton Model (CEM) of nuclear reactions are briefly described. They concern mainly the cascade stage of reactions and a better description of nuclei during the preequilibrium and evaporation stages of reactions. The development of the CEM concerning fission is given in a separate talk at this conference. The increased accuracy and predictive power of the CEM are shown by several examples. Possible further improvements to the CEM and other models are discussed.
Thermal properties of asymmetric nuclear matter, including the temperature dependence of the symmetry energy, single-particle properties, and differential isospin fractionation, are investigated with different neutron-proton effective mass splittings using an improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction. In this improved interaction, the momentum-dependence of the isoscalar single-particle potential at saturation density is well fitted to that extracted from optical model analyses of proton-nucleus scattering data up to nucleon kinetic energy of 1 GeV, and the isovector properties, i.e…
In high energy nuclear collisions, most calculations on the early equilibration of the parton plasma showed that the system does not come close to full equilibrium, especially for the fermion components. However, since the system is constantly evolving, the cooling effect due to expansion will lead to a decrease of the average parton energies. So the interactions should be enhanced by a corresponding increase of the running coupling. We show that this leads to a faster and improved equilibration. This improvement is more important for the fermions compensating partially for their weaker intera…
We introduce a global nuclear mass formula which is based on the macroscopic-microscopic method, the Skyrme energy-density functional and the isospin symmetry in nuclear physics. The rms deviation with respect to 2149 known nuclear masses falls to 336 keV, and the rms deviations from 1988 neutron separation energies and α-decay energies of 46 super-heavy nuclei are significantly reduced to 286 and 248 keV, respectively. The predictive power of the mass formula for describing new measured masses in GSI and those in AME2011 is excellent. In addition, we introduce an efficient and powerful system…
A compressible liquid-drop approach adjusted to uniform matter many-body calculations based on chiral EFT interactions and to the experimental nuclear masses is used to investigate the neutron star crust properties. Eight chiral EFT hamiltonians and a representative phenomenological force (SLy4) are confronted. We show that some properties of the crust, e.g. clusters mass, charge, and asymmetry, are mostly determined by symmetric matter properties close to saturation density and are therefore mainly constrained by experimental nuclear masses, while other properties, e.g., energy per particle, …
An improved quark mass density- dependent model with the non-linear scalar sigma field and the $ω$-meson field is presented. We show that the present model can describe saturation properties, the equation of state, the compressibility and the effective nuclear mass of nuclear matter under mean field approximation successfully. The comparison of the present model and the quark-meson coupling model is addressed.
MOCABA is a combination of Monte Carlo sampling and Bayesian updating algorithms for the prediction of integral functions of nuclear data, such as reactor power distributions or neutron multiplication factors. Similarly to the established Generalized Linear Least Squares (GLLS) methodology, MOCABA offers the capability to utilize integral experimental data to reduce the prior uncertainty of integral observables. The MOCABA approach, however, does not involve any series expansions and, therefore, does not suffer from the breakdown of first-order perturbation theory for large nuclear data uncert…
Taking into account more accurately the isospin dependence of nucleon-nucleon interactions in the in-medium many-body force term of the Gogny effective interaction, new expressions for the single nucleon potential and the symmetry energy are derived. Effects of both the spin(isospin) and the density dependence of nuclear effective interactions on the symmetry potential and the symmetry energy are examined. It is shown that they both play a crucial role in determining the symmetry potential and the symmetry energy at supra-saturation densities. The improved single nucleon potential will be usef…
Nuclear matrix elements of the neutrinoless double beta decays of 96Zr, 100Mo, 116Cd, 128Te, 130Te and 136Xe are calculated for the light-neutrino exchange mechanism by using the proton-neutron quasiparticle random-phase approximation (pnQRPA) with a realistic nucleon-nucleon force. The g_pp parameter of the pnQRPA is fixed by the data on the two-neutrino double beta decays and single beta decays. The finite size of a nucleon, the higher-order terms of nucleonic weak currents, and the nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations (s.r.c) are taken into account. The s.r.c. are computed by the tradit…
Three-body nuclear reactions in two-nucleon plus core systems are described in the framework of exact scattering equations including the core excitation. A nucleon-core optical potential is constructed that can be easily adjusted to the reference potential and thereby to the experimental two-body data, if available. This constitutes an important improvement over the simple deformation of the potential used previously that violated the original fit to the data. Predictions for elastic, inelastic, and transfer reactions involving $^{10}{Be}$ and $^{24}{Mg}$ nuclear cores are obtained. The new op…
We calculate the nuclear structure corrections to the Lamb shift in muonic deuterium by using state-of-the-art nucleon-nucleon potentials derived from chiral effective field theory. Our calculations complement previous theoretical work obtained from phenomenological potentials and the zero range approximation. The study of the chiral convergence order-by-order and the dependence on cutoff variations allows us to improve the estimates on the nuclear structure corrections and the theoretical uncertainty coming from nuclear potentials. This will enter the determination of the nuclear radius from …
An improved formalism of the two-neutrino double-beta decay ($2νββ$-decay) rate is presented, which takes into account the dependence of energy denominators on lepton energies via the Taylor expansion. Till now, only the leading term in this expansion has been considered. The revised $2νββ$-decay rate and differential characteristics depend on additional phase-space factors weighted by the ratios of $2νββ$-decay nuclear matrix elements with different powers of the energy denominator. For nuclei of experimental interest all phase-space factors are calculated by using exact Dirac wave functions …
In this paper is presented explicit improved numerical generalization of Bethe-Weizsacker mass formulae which describes the values of measured 2654 nuclear mass in AME2012 nuclear database with accuracy less than 2.2 MeV, starting from the number of protons Z=1 and number of neutrons N=1. In the obtained generazation of the Bethe-Weizsacker formula the influence of magic numbers and boundaries of their influence between them is defined for nine proton (2, 8, 14, 20, 28, 50, 82, 108, 124) and ten neutron (2, 8, 14, 20, 28, 50, 82, 124, 152, 202) magic numbers.
We present Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock calculations for isospin asymmetric nuclear matter which are based on improved approximations schemes. The potential matrix elements have been adapted for isospin asymmetric nuclear matter in order to account for the proton-neutron mass splitting in a more consistent way. The proton properties are particularly sensitive to this adaption and its consequences, whereas the neutron properties remains almost unaffected in neutron rich matter. Although at present full Brueckner calculations are still too complex to apply to finite nuclei, these relativistic Br…
The kernel ridge regression (KRR) method with Gaussian kernel is used to improve the description of the nuclear charge radius by several phenomenological formulae. The widely used $A^{1/3}$, $N^{1/3}$ and $Z^{1/3}$ formulae, and their improved versions by considering the isospin dependence are adopted as examples. The parameters in these six formulae are refitted using the Levenberg-Marquardt method, which give better results than the previous ones. The radius for each nucleus is predicted with the KRR network, which is trained with the deviations between experimental and calculated nuclear ch…
A compressible liquid-drop model (CLDM) is used to correlate uncertainties associated with the properties of the neutron star (NS) crust with theoretical estimates of the uncertainties associated with the equation of state (EOS) of homogeneous neutron and nuclear matter. For the latter, we employ recent calculations based on Hamiltonians constructed using Chiral Effective Field theory. Fits to experimental nuclear masses are employed to constrain the CLDM further, and we find that they disfavor some of the Chiral Hamiltonians. The CLDM allows us to study the complex interplay between bulk, sur…
Improved microscopic nuclear level densities within the triaxial Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov plus combinatorial method
Institut d’Astronomie et d’Astrophysique, ULB（布鲁塞尔自由大学天体物理学与天文学研究所）；CEA/DIF, Service de Physique Nucléaire（法国原子能和替代能源委员会DIF核物理处）；Nuclear Data Section, IAEA（国际原子能机构核数据处）
Nuclear structure and reaction theory are undergoing a major renaissance with advances in many-body methods, strong interactions with greatly improved links to Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the advent of high performance computing, and improved computational algorithms. Predictive power, with well-quantified uncertainty, is emerging from non-perturbative approaches along with the potential for new discoveries such as predicting nuclear phenomena before they are measured. We present an overview of some recent developments and discuss challenges that lie ahead. Our focus is on explorations of al…
Observations of neutron stars (NSs) by the LIGO-Virgo and NICER collaborations have provided reasonably precise measurements of their various macroscopic properties. In this paper, we employ a Bayesian framework to combine them and place improved joint constraints on the properties of NS equation of state (EoS). We use a hybrid EoS formulation that employs a parabolic expansion-based nuclear empirical parameterization around the nuclear saturation density augmented by a generic 3-segment piecewise polytrope model at higher densities. Within the $90 \%$ credible level this parameterization pred…
An improved density-matrix expansion is used to calculate the nuclear energy density functional from chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions. The two-body interaction comprises long-range one- and two-pion exchange contributions and a set of contact terms contributing up to fourth power in momenta. In addition we employ the leading order chiral three-nucleon interaction with its parameters $c_E, c_D$ and $c_{1,3,4}$ fixed in calculations of nuclear few-body systems. With this input the nuclear energy density functional is derived to first order in the two- and three-nucleon interaction. We …
Nuclear reaction rates of astrophysical applications are traditionally determined on the basis of Hauser-Feshbach reaction codes. These codes adopt a number of approximations that have never been tested, such as a simplified width fluctuation correction, the neglect of delayed or multiple-particle emission during the electromagnetic decay cascade, or the absence of the pre-equilibrium contribution at increasing incident energies. The reaction code TALYS has been recently updated to estimate the Maxwellian-averaged reaction rates that are of astrophysical relevance. These new developments enabl…
The radial basis function (RBF) approach has been used to improve the mass predictions of nuclear models. However, systematic deviations exist between the improved masses and the experimental data for nuclei with different odd-even parities of ($Z$, $N$), i.e., the (even $Z$, even $N$), (even $Z$, odd $N$), (odd $Z$, even $N$), and (odd $Z$, odd $N$). By separately training the RBF for these four different groups, it is found that the systematic odd-even deviations can be cured in a large extend and the predictive power of nuclear mass models can thus be further improved. Moreover, this new ap…
A neural-network model is developed to reproduce the differences between experimental nuclear mass-excess values and the theoretical values given by the Finite Range Droplet Model. The results point to the existence of subtle regularities of nuclear structure not yet contained in the best microscopic/phenomenological models of atomic masses. Combining the FRDM and the neural-network model, we create a hybrid model with improved predictive performance on nuclear-mass systematics and related quantities.
We performed a Penning trap mass measurement of $^{61}{\rm Zn}$ at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and NuShellX calculations of the $^{61}{\rm Zn}$ and $^{62}{\rm Ga}$ structure using the GXPF1A Hamiltonian to obtain improved estimates of the $^{61}{\rm Zn}(p,γ)^{62}{\rm Ga}$ and $^{60}{\rm Cu}(p,γ)^{61}{\rm Zn}$ reaction rates. Surveying astrophysical conditions for type-I X-ray bursts with the code MESA, implementing our improved reaction rates, and taking into account updated nuclear masses for $^{61}{\rm V}$ and $^{61}{\rm Cr}$ from the recent literature, we refine the ne…
We formulate microscopic optical potentials for nucleon-nucleus scattering from chiral two- and three-nucleon forces. The real and imaginary central terms of the optical potentials are obtained from the nucleon self energy in infinite nuclear matter at a given density and isospin asymmetry, calculated self-consistently to second order in many-body perturbation theory. The real spin-orbit term is extracted from the same chiral potential using an improved density matrix expansion. The density-dependent optical potential is then folded with the nuclear density distributions of 40Ca, 42Ca, 44Ca, a…
An updated and improved version of the effective interaction based on the Argonne\textendash Urbana nuclear Hamiltonian\textemdash derived using the formalism of Correlated Basis Functions (CBF) and the cluster expansion technique\textemdash is employed to obtain a number of properties of cold nuclear matter at arbitrary neutron excess within the formalism of many-body perturbation theory. The numerical results\textemdash including the ground-state energy per nucleon, the symmetry energy, the pressure, the compressibility, and the single-particle spectrum\textemdash are discussed in the contex…
We use an improved version of the SU(3) flavour parity-doublet quark-hadron model to investigate the higher order baryon number susceptibilities near the chiral and the nuclear liquid-gas transitions. The parity-doublet model has been improved by adding higher-order interaction terms of the scalar fields in the effective mean field Lagrangian, resulting in a much-improved description of nuclear ground-state properties, in particular the nuclear compressibility. The resulting phase diagram of the model agrees qualitatively with expectations from lattice QCD, i.e., it shows a crossover at zero n…
We tabulate the atomic mass excesses and nuclear ground-state deformations of 8979 nuclei ranging from $^{16}$O to $A=339$. The calculations are based on the finite-range droplet macroscopic model and the folded-Yukawa single-particle microscopic model. Relative to our 1981 mass table the current results are obtained with an improved macroscopic model, an improved pairing model with a new form for the effective-interaction pairing gap, and minimization of the ground-state energy with respect to additional shape degrees of freedom. The values of only 9 constants are determined directly from a l…
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) is an important stage of a homogeneous and isotropic expanding universe. The results of calculation of the synthesis of light elements during this epoch can then be compared with the abundances of the light elements. The theoretical calculation of the BBN model depends on the initial conditions of the early universe and reaction cross sections measured by the nuclear physics experiment. Recently, an update of the NACRE (Nuclear Astrophysics Compilation of REactions) database is presented. This improved compilation comprises thermonuclear reaction rates for 34 two…
In this article, we analyze some nuclear structure aspects of the neutrinoless double beta decay nuclear matrix elements (NME), in the framework of the Interacting Shell Model. We give results for the decays of 48Ca, 76Ge, 82Se, 124Sn, 128Te, 130Te, and 136Xe, using improved effective interactions and valence spaces. We examine the dependence of the NME's on the effective interaction and the valence space, and analyze the effects of the short range correlations and the finite size of the nucleon. Finally we study the influence of the deformation on the values of the NME's.
Recent developments of the Cascade-Exciton Model (CEM) of nuclear reactions are described. The improved cascade-exciton model as implemented in the code CEM97 differs from the CEM95 version by incorporating new approximations for the elementary cross sections used in the cascade, using more precise values for nuclear masses and pairing energies, using corrected systematics for the level-density parameters, and several other refinements. We have improved algorithms used in many subroutines, decreasing the computing time by up to a factor of 6 for heavy targets. We describe a number of further i…
The nucleon spectral function in infinite nuclear matter is calculated in a quantum transport theoretical approach. Exploiting the known relation between collision rates and correlation functions the spectral function is derived self-consistently. By re-inserting the spectral functions into the collision integrals the description of hard processes from the high-momentum components of wave functions and interactions is improved iteratively until convergence is achieved. The momentum and energy distributions and the nuclear matter occupation probabilities are in very good agreement with the resu…
We present calculations for symmetric nuclear matter using chiral nuclear interactions within the Self-Consistent Green's Functions approach in the ladder approximation. Three-body forces are included via effective one-body and two-body interactions, computed from an uncorrelated average over a third particle. We discuss the effect of the three-body forces on the total energy, computed with an extended Galitskii-Migdal-Koltun sum-rule, as well as on single-particle properties. Saturation properties are substantially improved when three-body forces are included, but there is still some underlyi…
We extend a recent three-loop calculation of nuclear matter in chiral perturbation theory by including the effects from two-pion exchange with single and double virtual $Δ(1232)$-isobar excitation. Regularization dependent short-range contributions from pion-loops are encoded in a few NN-contact coupling constants. The empirical saturation point of isospin-symmetric nuclear matter, $\bar E_0 = -16 $MeV, $ρ_0 = 0.16 $fm$^{-3}$, can be well reproduced by adjusting the strength of a two-body term linear in density (and weakening an emerging three-body term quadratic in density). The nuclear matte…
Based on an improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction, we have studied the qualitative effect of isospin splitting of nucleon effective mass on the specific shear viscosity of neutron-rich nuclear matter from a relaxation time approach. It is seen that for $m_n^\star>m_p^\star$, the relaxation time of neutrons is smaller and the neutron flux between flow layers is weaker, leading to a smaller specific shear viscosity of neutron-rich matter compared to the case for $m_n^\star<m_p^\star$. The effect is larger in nuclear matter at higher densities, lower temperatures, and larger isospi…
We report a direct measurement of the Q-value of the neutrinoless double-beta-decay candidate 48Ca at the TITAN Penning-trap mass spectrometer, with the result that Q = 4267.98(32) keV. We measured the masses of both the mother and daughter nuclides, and in the latter case found a 1 keV deviation from the literature value. In addition to the Q-value, we also present results of a new calculation of the neutrinoless double-beta-decay nuclear matrix element of 48Ca. Using diagrammatic many-body perturbation theory to second order to account for physics outside the valence space, we constructed an…
The relativistic mean field (RMF) model of the nuclear matter equation of state has been modified by including the effect of Pauli-blocking owing to quark exchange between the baryons. Different schemes of a chiral enhancement of the quark Pauli blocking have been suggested according to the adopted density dependence of the dynamical quark mass. The resulting equations of state for the pressure are compared to the RMF model DD2 with excluded volume correction. On the basis of this comparison a density-dependent nucleon volume is extracted which parametrises the quark Pauli blocking effect in t…
Improved upper bounds are presented on the coupling $|U_{e4}|^2$ of an electron to a sterile neutrino $ν_4$ from analyses of data on nuclear and particle decays, including superallowed nuclear beta decays, the ratios $R^{(π)}_{e/μ}=BR(π^+ \to e^+ ν_e)/BR(π^+ \to μ^+ ν_μ)$, $R^{(K)}_{e/μ}$, $R^{(D_s)}_{e/τ}$, and $B^+_{e 2}$ decay, covering the mass range from MeV to GeV.
We perform a study of infinite hadronic matter, finite nuclei and hypernuclei with an improved method of calculating the effective baryon mass. A detailed study of the predictions of the model is made in comparison with the available data and the level of agreement is generally very good. Comparison with an earlier treatment shows relatively minor differences at or below normal nuclear matter density, while at high density the improved calculation is quite different. In particular, we find no phase transition corresponding to chiral symmetry restoration in high density nuclear matter.
We study the two-nucleon force at next-to-next-to-leading order in a chiral effective field theory with explicit Delta degrees of freedom. Fixing the appearing low-energy constants from a next-to-leading order calculation of pion-nucleon threshold parameters, we find an improved convergence of most peripheral nucleon-nucleon phases compared to the theory with pions and nucleons only. In the delta-full theory, the next-to-leading order corrections are dominant in most partial waves considered.
The short-range and tensor components of the bare nucleon-nucleon interaction induce a sizeable depletion of low momenta in the ground state of a nuclear many-body system. The self-consistent Green's function method within the ladder approximation provides an \textit{ab-initio} description of correlated nuclear systems that accounts properly for these effects. The momentum distribution predicted by this approach is analyzed in detail, with emphasis on the depletion of the lowest momentum state. The temperature, density, and nucleon asymmetry (isospin) dependence of the depletion of the Fermi s…
We use a recently improved version of the chiral nucleon-nucleon potential at next-to-next-to-leading order to calculate the $^1S_0$ pairing gap in isospin-symmetric nuclear matter. The pairing potential consists of the long-range one- and two-pion exchange terms and two short-distance NN-contact couplings. We find that the inclusion of the two-pion exchange at next-to-next-to-leading order reduces substantially the cut-off dependence of the $^1S_0$ pairing gap determined by solving a regularised BCS equation. Our results are close to those obtained with the universal low-momentum nucleon-nucl…
We present an updated and improved equation of state (which we call the NDL EoS) for use in neutron-star structure and supernova simulations. This EoS is based upon a framework originally developed by Bowers & Wilson, but there are numerous changes. Among them are: (1) a reformulation in the context of density functional theory; (2) the possibility of the formation of material with a net proton excess (Ye > 0.5); (3) an improved treatment of the nuclear statistical equilibrium and the transition to heavy nuclei as the density approaches nuclear matter density; (4) an improved treatment of the …
We construct a nuclear interaction in chiral effective field theory with explicit inclusion of the $Δ$-isobar $Δ(1232)$ degree of freedom at all orders up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). We use pion-nucleon ($πN$) low-energy constants (LECs) from a Roy-Steiner analysis of $πN$ scattering data, optimize the LECs in the contact potentials up to NNLO to reproduce low-energy nucleon-nucleon scattering phase shifts, and constrain the three-nucleon interaction at NNLO to reproduce the binding energy and point-proton radius of $^{4}$He. For heavier nuclei we use the coupled-cluster method to…
This review focuses on nuclear reactions in astrophysics and, more specifically, on reactions with light ions (nucleons and alpha particles) proceeding via the strong interaction. It is intended to present the basic definitions essential for studies in nuclear astrophysics, to point out the differences between nuclear reactions taking place in stars and in a terrestrial laboratory, and to illustrate some of the challenges to be faced in theoretical and experimental studies of those reactions. The discussion revolves around the relevant quantities for astrophysics, which are the astrophysical r…
We study if commonly used nucleon-nucleon effective interactions, obtained from fitting the properties of cold nuclear matter and of finite nuclei, can properly describe the hot dense nuclear matter produced in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions. We use two representative effective interactions, i.e., an improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction with its isovector part calibrated by the results from the \emph{ab initio} non-perturbative self-consistent Green's function (SCGF) approach with chiral forces, and a Skyme-type interaction fitted to the equation of state of cold nucl…
By using a machine learning algorithms, we present an improved nuclear mass table with a root mean square deviation of less than $200$keV. The model is equipped with statistical error bars in order to compare with available experimental data. We use the resulting model to predict the composition of the outer crust of a neutron star. By means of simple Monte Carlo methods, we propagate the statistical uncertainties of the mass model to the equation of state of the system.
We present new results based on an improved version of the Glauber model, used to describe the nuclear absorption of J/psi in reactions between nuclei at high energy. The excitation of the colour degrees of freedom of nucleons, due to collisions mediated by one-gluon exchange, is taken into account. It is found that the proposed mechanism leads to larger nuclear absorption of J/psi than previously considered.
