In recent years, the italian theoretical Nuclear Physics community has played a leading role in the development of a unified approach, allowing for a consistent and fully quantitative description of the nuclear response to electromagnetic and weak probes. In this paper I review the main achievements in both fields, point out some of the open problems, and outline the most promising prospects.
Since the pioneering work of Weinberg, Chiral Effective Field Theory ($χ$EFT) has been widely and successfully utilized in nuclear physics to study many-nucleon interactions and associated electroweak currents. Nuclear $χ$EFT has now developed into an intense field of research and is applied to study light to medium mass nuclei. In this contribution, we focus on the development of electroweak currents from $χ$EFT and present applications to selected nuclear electroweak observables.
We briefly review the growing efforts to set up a unified framework for the description of neutrino interactions with atomic nuclei and nuclear matter, applicable in the broad kinematical region corresponding to neutrino energies ranging between few MeV and few GeV. The emerging picture suggests that the formalism of nuclear many-body theory can be exploited to obtain the neutrino-nucleus cross sections needed for both the interpretation of oscillation signals and simulation of neutrino transport in compact stars.
The development of the chiral dynamics based description of nuclear electroweak currents is reviewed. Gerald E. (Gerry) Brown's role in basing theoretical nuclear physics on chiral Lagrangians is emphasized. Illustrative examples of the successful description of electroweak observables of light nuclei obtained from chiral effective field theory are presented.
We present the results of a recent study of meson-exchange two-body currents in lepton-nucleus inclusive scattering at various kinematics and for different nuclei within the Relativistic Fermi Gas model. We show that the associated nuclear response functions at their peaks scale as $A k_F^2$, for Fermi momentum $k_F$ going from 200 to 300 MeV/c and momentum transfer $q$ from $2k_F$ to 2 GeV/c. This behavior is different from what is found for the quasielastic response, which scales as $A/k_F$. This result can be valuable in the analyses of long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, which …
The past decade has witnessed tremendous progress in the theoretical and computational tools that produce our understanding of nuclei. A number of microscopic calculations of nuclear electroweak structure and reactions have successfully explained the available experimental data, yielding a complex picture of the way nuclei interact with electroweak probes. This achievement is of great interest from the pure nuclear-physics point of view. But it is of much broader interest too, because the level of accuracy and confidence reached by these calculations opens up the concrete possibility of using …
Nuclear Many-Body Theory of Electroweak Interactions with Nuclei at Intermediate Energies
将文献\cite{GNO97}中的核包容电子模型的准弹性（QE）贡献推广到研究电弱荷电电流（CC）引起的中能核反应，为将来的中微子振荡实验提供理论依据.长程核关联（RPA），最终状态相互作用（FSI）和库仑修正包括在模型中。RPA的相关性在整个中微子能量范围内发挥着至关重要的作用，高达500兆电子伏，在这项工作中研究。通过元素周期表和反应$^{12}$ C $(ν_μ,μ^-)X$和$^{12}$ C $(ν_e,e^-)X$阈值附近的包容μ子捕获的预测也给出了。
Kaon electroweak properties in symmetric nuclear matter are studied in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model using the proper-time regularization. The valence quark properties in symmetric nuclear matter are calculated in the quark-meson coupling model, and they are used as inputs for studying the in-medium kaon properties in the NJL model. We evaluate the kaon decay constant, kaon-quark coupling constant, and $K^+$ electromagnetic form factor by two different approaches. Namely, by two different ways of calculating the in-medium constituent quark masses of the light quarks. We predict that, in both a…
Over the last decade, numerical solutions of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) using the technique of lattice QCD have developed to a point where they are beginning to connect fundamental aspects of nuclear physics to the underlying degrees of freedom of the Standard Model. In this review, the progress of lattice QCD studies of nuclear matrix elements of electroweak currents and beyond-Standard-Model operators is summarized, and connections with effective field theories and nuclear models are outlined. Lattice QCD calculations of nuclear matrix elements can provide guidance for low-energy nuclear r…
Electroweak probes are potential tool to study the properties of the hot and dense strongly interacting matter produced in relativistic nuclear collisions due to their unique nature. A selection of the new experimental analysis and results from theory calculations on electromagnetic and weak probes presented at the Hard Probes 2020 are discussed in this contribution.
We lay out a novel formalism to connect the isospin-symmetry breaking correction to the rates of superallowed nuclear beta decays, $δ_\text{C}$, to the isospin-breaking sensitive combinations of electroweak nuclear radii that can be accessed experimentally. We individuate transitions in the superallowed decay chart where a measurement of the neutron skin of a stable daughter even at a moderate precision could already help discriminating between models used to compute $δ_\text{C}$. We review the existing experimental situation and make connection to the existing and future experimental programs…
A microscopic description of the interaction of atomic nuclei with external electroweak probes is required for elucidating aspects of short-range nuclear dynamics and for the correct interpretation of neutrino oscillation experiments. Nuclear quantum Monte Carlo methods infer the nuclear electroweak response functions from their Laplace transforms. Inverting the Laplace transform is a notoriously ill-posed problem; and Bayesian techniques, such as maximum entropy, are typically used to reconstruct the original response functions in the quasielastic region. In this work, we present a physics-in…
In recent years, the combination of precise quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods with realistic nuclear interactions and consistent electroweak currents, in particular those constructed within effective field theories (EFTs), has lead to new insights in light and medium-mass nuclei, neutron matter, and electroweak reactions. This compelling new body of work has been made possible both by advances in QMC methods for nuclear physics, which push the bounds of applicability to heavier nuclei and to asymmetric nuclear matter and by the development of local chiral EFT interactions up to next-to-next-to…
Cross sections for the concurrent production of pairs of quarkonia (J/psi, Upsilon) and/or gauge bosons (W, Z) from double-parton scatterings (DPS) in high-energy proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC are calculated. The estimates are based on next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD predictions, including nuclear modifications of the parton densities, for the corresponding single-scattering cross sections. Expected event rates for J/psi+J/psi, J/psi+Upsilon, J/psi+W, J/psi+Z, Upsilon+Upsilon, Upsilon+W, Upsilon+Z, and same-sign W+W production in their (di)leptonic decay modes…
Elastic electron scattering has been used to paint the most accurate picture of the proton distribution in atomic nuclei. Spurred by new experimental developments, it is now possible to gain valuable insights into the neutron distribution using exclusively electroweak probes. Our goal is to assess the information content and complementarity of the following three electroweak experiments in constraining the neutron distribution of atomic nuclei: (a) parity violating elastic electron scattering, (b) coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering, and (c) elastic electron scattering of unstable nuc…
The charge form factor and weak decay constant of the pion as well as the pion-quark coupling constant in symmetric nuclear matter are explored in the framework of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model, where the pion is described as a bound state of dressed quark-antiquark pair obtained by the Bethe-Salpeter equation. For the in-medium current quark properties, we adopt the quark-meson coupling model, which describes successfully many hadron properties in a nuclear medium. The pion decay constant and the pion-quark coupling constant are found to decrease with increasing density as well as the magnitu…
In this proceeding I briefly review current status of the construction of nuclear electro-weak currents within chiral effective field theory. I show that gauge and chiral symmetry requirements lead to the well-known continuity equations for the current and charge operators which, however, get modified at higher orders. Regularization of the current will be also discussed. I demonstrate that implementation of a cutoff regulator in a naive way leads to violation of chiral symmetry. To respect the underlying symmetries I propose to use higher derivative regularization in the nuclear forces and cu…
Using the new results on coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering data in cesium-iodide provided by the COHERENT experiment, we determine a new measurement of the average neutron rms radius of $^{133}\text{Cs}$ and $^{127}\text{I}$. In combination with the atomic parity violation (APV) experimental result, we derive the most precise measurement of the neutron rms radii of $^{133}\text{Cs}$ and $^{127}\text{I}$, disentangling for the first time the contributions of the two nuclei. By exploiting these measurements we determine the corresponding neutron skin values for $^{133}\text{Cs}$ and $…
Probing the electroweak structure of nuclei with rare atoms and molecules
Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；TRIUMF（特利昂夫）；McGill University（麦吉尔大学）；Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）
The Power Of Effective Field Theories In Nuclei: The Deuteron, NN Scattering and Electroweak Processes
我们展示了如何有效有效的量子场论工作在核物理。利用物理上透明的截断正则化方法，我们研究了最简单的两核子核系统的束缚态和散射态，其动量尺度远小于π介子质量。我们考虑了氘核的所有静态性质、双核子散射相移、热能下的n + p --> d + γ过程和太阳质子聚变过程p + p --> d + e（+）+v（e），并证明了这些都在次领先阶展开中得到了很高的精度描述。我们探讨如何一个“新的”自由度进入一个有效的理论打开和关闭的作用，π介子的拉格朗日。
Within two different frameworks of isospin-dependent transport model, effect of nuclear symmetry energy at supradensities on the isospin-fractionation (IsoF) was investigated. With positive/negative symmetry potential at supradensities (i.e., values of symmetry energy increase/decrease with density above saturation density), for energetic nucleons, the value of neutron to proton ratio of free nucleons is larger/smaller than that of bound nucleon fragments. Compared with extensively studied quantitative observables of nuclear symmetry energy, the normal or abnormal isospin-fractionation of ener…
Based on the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics model, finite-size scaling effects on nuclear liquid--gas phase transition probes are investigated by studying the de-excitation processes of six thermal sources of different sizes with the same initial density and similar $N/Z$. Using several probes including the total multiplicity derivative ($dM_{tot}/dT$), second moment parameter ($M_2$), intermediate mass fragment (IMF) multiplicity ($N_{IMF}$), Fisher's power-law exponent ($τ$), and Ma's nuclear Zipf's law exponent ($ξ$), the relationship between the phase transition temperature a…
We propose measuring the mass shift and width broadening of the $f_1(1285)$ meson together with those of the $ω$ from a nuclear target as a means to experimentally probe the partial restoration of chiral symmetry inside the nuclear matter. The relation between the order parameter of chiral symmetry and the difference in the correlation functions of the $f_1(1285)$ current and the $ω$ current is discussed in the limit where the disconnected diagrams are neglected. A QCD sum rule analysis of the $f_1(1285)$ meson mass leads to about 100 MeV attraction in nuclear matter, which can be probed in fu…
The penetrating nature of electromagnetic signals makes them suitable probes to explore the properties of the strongly-interacting medium created in relativistic nuclear collisions. We examine the effects of the initial conditions and shear relaxation time on the spectra and flow coefficients of electromagnetic probes, using an event-by-event 3+1D viscous hydrodynamic simulation (MUSIC).
Single and double pi^{-}/pi^{+} ratios in heavy-ion reactions as probes of the high-density behavior of the nuclear symmetry energy
Based on an isospin- and momentum-dependent hadronic transport model IBUU04, effects of the nuclear symmetry energy on the single and double pi^{-}/pi^{+}ratios in central reactions of ^{132}Sn+^{124}Sn and ^{112}Sn+^{112}Sn at a beam energy of 400 MeV/nucleon are studied. It is found that around the Coulomb peak of the single pi^{-}/pi^{+} ratio the double pi^{-}/pi^{+} ratio taken from the two isotopic reactions retains about the same sensitivity to the density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy. Because the double pi^{-}/pi^{+}ratio can reduce significantly the systematic errors , it is …
