Head of the team: Elias KHAN
The core of this activity is the development of theories to understand nuclear phenomena, such as the nucleon-nucleon interaction, the internal structure and dynamics of nuclei, as well as the impact of nuclear matter properties on other fields such as nuclear astrophysics. The methods developed range from effective field theories and few-body theories to various many-body techniques such as density functional theories, cluster models, ab initio methods, and transport theories, combining formal techniques with their numerical implementations. These tools are by nature interdisciplinary and have strong connections with fields such as condensed matter, atomic physics, and quantum chemistry. Beyond its fundamental nature, this subject is essential for the microscopic interpretation and prediction of experimental results in nuclear physics, strongly supporting ongoing and upcoming experiments conducted at national and international facilities, and for understanding certain astrophysical phenomena (neutron stars and their mergers, supernovae, nucleosynthesis). The team is part of the cross-disciplinary group “Nuclear Physics in the Cosmos.” There are also links with physics beyond the Standard Model through the study of fundamental symmetries in nuclei, such as neutrinoless double beta decay.
In particular, our expertise covers:
- Theoretical description of nuclear structure and nuclear properties (few-body systems, ab initio methods, density functional theory, collective excitations)
- Theoretical description of nuclear reactions (ab initio methods, few-body methods, time-dependent density functional theory, stochastic quantum approaches)
- Impact on nuclear astrophysics (evaluation of astrophysical reaction rates, equation of state, multi-messenger astrophysics)
with strong interdisciplinary connections to other fields (e.g., atomic physics, condensed matter, and quantum chemistry).
We are currently engaged in the development of emerging techniques:
- Machine Learning applied to nuclear physics
- Quantum Computing and quantum information applied to many-body systems
If you’re interested in these topics, contact us!