We study fusion reactions of the ${}^{64}\mathrm{Ni}+{}^{132}\mathrm{Sn}$ system using the recently introduced density constrained time-dependent Hartree-Fock formalism. In this formalism the fusion barriers are directly obtained from time-dependent Hartree-Fock dynamics. In addition, we incorporate the entrance channel alignment of the deformed (oblate) ${}^{64}\mathrm{Ni}$ nucleus due to dynamical Coulomb excitation. We discuss the influence of particle transfer and other dynamical effects on the fusion cross sections. Calculated cross sections are in very good agreement with data and other calculations.

We discuss the effects of screening by conduction electrons and of the quantum motion of the target deuteron on low-energy $d$+$D$ reactions in matter. As for the former, we solve the Kohn-Sham equation to analyze the nonlinear response of electrons to the reacting nuclei. Comparing the results with those of the linear response theory, we demonstrate the importance of nonlinear effects in the electron screening in matter. However, the resultant screening effect explains neither the huge screening potentials reported experimentally for some host materials nor the strong host material dependence. As for the latter, we develop a coupled-channels framework in an Eikonal approximation to calculate the barrier penetrability by taking the quantum motion of the target deuteron embedded in a confinement potential at an interstitial site into account. We show that the effect of quantum motion is too small to explain the experimentally reported huge enhancement of the reaction rate in matter as long as the parameters of the confinement potential are assessed from the data of neutron scattering for studying the diffusion of hydrogens in matter. To see the circumstances under which the huge enhancement of the reaction rate could be attributed to the quantum motion of the target deuteron, we also discuss the dependence of the effect of quantum motion on the properties of the confinement potential by varying the parameters of the potential from those provided by the neutron scattering.

The elastic scattering and breakup of ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$ from a proton target at intermediate energies is studied. We explore the role of core excitation in the reaction mechanism. Comparison with the data suggests that there is still missing physics in the description.

The transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity dependences of partonic Machlike shock wave have been studied by using a multiphase transport model with both partonic and hadronic interactions. The splitting parameter $D$, i.e., half distance between two splitting peaks on away side in di-hadron azimuthal angular ($\Delta \varphi$) correlations, slightly increases with the transverse momentum of associated hadrons ($p_T^{\mathrm{assoc}}$), which is consistent with preliminary experimental trend, owing to different interaction-lengths/numbers between wave partons and medium in strong parton cascade. However, the splitting parameter $D$ as a function of pseudorapidity of associated hadrons (${\eta }^{\mathrm{assoc}}$), stays flat in the mid-pseudorapidity region and rapidly drops in the high-pseudorapidity region, which is a result of different violent degrees of jet-medium interactions in the medium that has different energy densities in the longitudinal direction. It is proposed that the research on the properties of Machlike correlation can shed light on the knowledge of both partonic and hadronic interactions at RHIC.

Polarized Compton scattering off the proton is studied within the framework of subtracted dispersion relations for photon energies up to 300 MeV. As a guideline for forthcoming experiments, we focus the attention on the role of the proton's spin polarizabilities and investigate the most favorable conditions to extract them with a minimum of model dependence. We conclude that a complete separation of the four spin polarizabilities is possible, at photon energies between threshold and the $\Delta (1232)$ region, provided one can achieve polarization measurements with an accuracy of a few percent.

A new method employing a 12 inch × 12 inch γ-summing single NaI crystal was developed for cross-section measurements of astrophysically relevant capture reactions on medium-mass nuclei. The response function of such a $4\pi$ detector enables the summing of all capture events. As a result, a single peak, the so-called sum peak, arises in the spectra. Its intensity can be used to obtain cross sections of capture reactions with unknown multiplicities. The method enables to first determine these multiplicities, which are then used to derive the corresponding efficiency of the sum peak by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Cross sections are finally obtained from the sum-peak intensity with an average uncertainty of $\approx 15\%$. The method was first applied to the ${}^{62}\mathrm{Ni}$($\alpha ,\gamma$)${}^{66}\mathrm{Zn}$ reaction. The results obtained are in excellent agreement with those reported in literature. The new method proposed here was then employed to determine cross sections of 25 capture reactions in the Ni–Sb region. The cross sections measured for the ${}^{103}\mathrm{Rh}$($p,\gamma$)${}^{104}\mathrm{Pd}$ reaction are also presented. A very good agreement between the cross sections measured in the present work and the corresponding predictions of the Hauser-Feshbach theory was found.

We compare two nonrelativistic (NR) reduction schemes (heavy-fermion and Foldy-Wouthuysen) that are used to derive low-energy effective-field-theory Lagrangians. We give the explicit transformation between the two types of fields to $\mathcal{O}(1/m^2)$, derived from a quite general, relativistic Lagrangian. Beyond leading order the NR reductions always involve the smaller components of the Dirac spinors that are to be integrated out to formulate the NR theory. Even so, the transformation between the NR Lagrangians can be carried out explicitly to $\mathcal{O}(1/m^2)$ using a field renormalization, as long as the lower components of the Lagrangian are known. The fixed coefficient corrections to some low-energy constants at $\mathcal{O}(1/m^2)$ will depend on the particular scheme chosen, but will match after the field renormalization.

We examine various techniques for assigning the core-cluster partitions of nuclei in the actinide region. The core-cluster charge products thus obtained are found to be closely correlated with the corresponding $B(E2\downarrow ;2^{+}\to 0^{+})$ values, with the excitation energies and with the products of valence nucleon numbers of the parent nuclei.

A precise fusion excitation function has been measured for ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}+{}^{94}\mathrm{Zr}$ at near- and sub-barrier energies, and the fusion barrier distribution has been extracted. Comparing with the existing data for ${}^{40,48}\mathrm{Ca}+{}^{90,96}\mathrm{Zr}$ shows that couplings to inelastic excitations determine the fusion cross sections and the shape of the barrier distributions near the barrier. At lower energies, the two systems possessing neutron-transfer channels with large positive $Q$-values (${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}+{}^{94,96}\mathrm{Zr}$) have remarkably similar cross sections, and both show a large enhancement with respect to the other systems and to coupled-channels calculations including up to three quadrupole and octupole phonons in the Zr targets.

The temperature and chemical potential dependent surface tension of bags is introduced into the gas of a quark-gluon bags model. This resolves a long standing problem of a unified description of the first- and second-order phase transition with the crossover. Such an approach is necessary to model the complicated properties of quark-gluon plasma and hadronic matter from the first principles of statistical mechanics. The suggested model has an exact analytical solution and allows one to rigorously study the vicinity of the critical endpoint of the deconfinement phase transition. The existence of higher order phase transitions at the critical endpoint is discussed. In addition, we found that at the curve of a zero surface tension coefficient there must exist the surface induced phase transition of the second or higher order, which separates the pure quark-gluon plasma (QGP) from the crossover states, which are the mixed states of hadrons and QGP bags. Thus, the present model predicts that the critical endpoint of quantum chromodynamics is the tricritical endpoint.

The ${21}^{+}$ isomer in ${}^{94}\mathrm{Ag}$ has recently been reported to have a two-proton decay branch to ${}^{92}\mathrm{Rh}$. We have populated ${}^{92}\mathrm{Rh}$ through the ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}$(${}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}$,$\alpha \mathit{pn}$) reaction at 240 MeV, and have performed detailed spectroscopic measurements of the levels, finding new states and measuring angular distributions of γ rays. We find no evidence for the states reported to be populated by the two-proton decay of ${}^{94}\mathrm{Ag}$${}^m$. The calculated $Q$-value for the two-proton decay implies that this process directly feeds low-lying yrast, or near-yrast, states in ${}^{92}\mathrm{Rh}$, which is very difficult to reconcile with our observations. Several scenarios for the population of ${}^{92}\mathrm{Rh}$ are discussed, none of which appears to be satisfactory.

The reaction $\mathit{pp}\to \mathit{pp}{\pi }^0$ was studied with the WASA detector at the CELSIUS storage ring. The center of mass angular distribution of the ${\pi }^0$ was obtained by detection of the γ decay products together with the two outgoing protons and found to be anisotropic with a negative second derivative slope, in agreement with the theoretical predictions from a microscopic calculation.

The differential cross sections and vector analyzing powers for $\mathit{nd}$ elastic scattering at $E_n=248$ MeV were measured for $10°–180°$ in the center-of-mass (c.m.) system. To cover the wide angular range, the experiments were performed separately by using two different setups for forward and backward angles. The data are compared with theoretical results based on Faddeev calculations with realistic nucleon-nucleon ($\mathit{NN}$) forces such as AV18, CD Bonn, and Nijmegen I and II, and their combinations with the three-nucleon forces (3NFs), such as Tucson-Melbourne 99 (TM99), Urbana IX, and the coupled-channel potential with Δ-isobar excitation. Large discrepancies are found between the experimental cross sections and theory with only $2N$ forces for ${\theta }_{\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{m}.}>90°$. The inclusion of 3NFs brings the theoretical cross sections closer to the data but only partially explains this discrepancy. For the analyzing power, no significant improvement is found when 3NFs are included. Relativistic corrections are shown to be small for both the cross sections and the analyzing powers at this energy. For the cross sections, these effects are mostly seen in the very backward angles. Compared with the $\mathit{pd}$ cross section data, quite significant differences are observed at all scattering angles that cannot be explained only by the Coulomb interaction, which is usually significant at small angles.

We used our (perviously described) system for high sensitivity measurements of β-delayed α-particle emission of light nuclei to measure upper limits of the branching ratios of the first-forbidden rank-one β decay of the $2^{+}$ ground state of ${}^{20}F$ to the $3^{-},5.62$ MeV, and $1^{-},5.79$ MeV excited states of ${}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$ to be $1.5\times {10}^{-6}$ and $7\times {10}^{-7}$, respectively. These limits are more than a factor of 300 smaller than previously measured. The obtained $\mathit{ft}$ values are at least a factor of 10 smaller than that of the first-forbidden rank-zero β decay to the $2^{-}$ state at $4.97$ MeV in ${}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$, whose branching ratio was also measured to be $1.2(6)\times {10}^{-4}$, in agreement with the precise value obtained by Alburger and Warburton of $0.90(4)\times {10}^{-4}$.

Inclusive electron scattering off ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ is investigated for low and medium energy and momentum transfers. The final state interaction, given by the simple semirealistic Malfliet-Tjon potential, is treated rigorously applying the Lorentz integral transform (LIT) method. In addition to the nonrelativistic one-body current a consistent meson exchange current is constructed and implemented. Results are presented for both longitudinal and transverse response functions at various momentum transfers. Good agreement with experimental data is found for the longitudinal response function, whereas some strength is missing in the transverse response function on the low energy side of the quasi-elastic peak.

Variation after particle-number restoration is incorporated for the first time into the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) framework employing the Skyrme energy density functional with zero-range pairing. The resulting projected HFB equations can be expressed in terms of the local gauge-angle-dependent densities. Results of projected calculations are compared with those obtained within the Lipkin-Nogami method in the standard version and with the Lipkin-Nogami method followed by exact particle-number projection.

Lifetimes of seven low-lying excited states of ${}^{134}\mathrm{La}$ in the picosecond range have been determined by the recoil distance method (RDM). Lifetimes of six states, belonging to a strong $M1$ band and having shorter lifetimes, have been determined by the Doppler shift attenuation method (DSAM). This band with intense $M1$ transitions and very few weak $E2$ crossovers appeared to be due to magnetic rotation. However, such a possibility is ruled out because roughly constant values of $B(M1)$ were found from the lifetime results. The semiclassical model was utilized to calculate the $B(M1)$ values; and after being compared with the experimental results, the band was assigned the multiparticle configuration $\pi g_{7/2}\otimes \nu h_{11/2}(h_{11/2}){}^2$, which differs from the earlier assignment of $\pi h_{11/2}\otimes \nu g_{7/2}(h_{11/2}){}^2$.

We measured fragmentation cross sections produced using the primary beam of ${}^{86}\mathrm{Kr}$ at 64 MeV/nucleon on ${}^9\mathrm{Be}$ and ${}^{181}\mathrm{Ta}$ targets. The cross sections were obtained by integrating the momentum distributions of isotopes with $25⩽Z⩽36$ measured using the RIPS fragment separator at RIKEN. The cross-section ratios obtained with the ${}^{181}\mathrm{Ta}$ and ${}^9\mathrm{Be}$ targets depend on the fragment masses, contrary to the simple geometrical models. We compared the extracted cross sections to EPAX; an empirical parametrization of fragmentation cross sections. Predictions from current EPAX parametrization severely overestimate the production cross sections of very neutron-rich isotopes. Attempts to obtain another set of EPAX parameters specific to the reaction studied here to extrapolate the neutron-rich nuclei more accurately have not been very successful, suggesting that accurate predictions of production cross sections of nuclei far from the valley of stability require information of nuclear properties that are not present in EPAX.

Low-spin structures in ${}^{86,88}\mathrm{Mo}$ were populated using the ${}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}$(${}^{36}\mathrm{Ar}$, $x\alpha yp$) heavy-ion fusion-evaporation reaction at a beam energy of 111 MeV. Charged particles and γ rays were emitted in the reactions and detected by the DIAMANT CsI ball and the EXOGAM Ge array, respectively. In addition to the previously reported low-to-medium spin states in these nuclei, new low-spin structures were observed. Angular correlation and linear polarization measurements were performed in order to unambiguously determine the spins and parities of intensely populated states in ${}^{88}\mathrm{Mo}$. Quasiparticle Random Phase Approximation (QRPA) calculations were performed for the first and second excited $2^{+}$ states in ${}^{86}\mathrm{Mo}$ and ${}^{88}\mathrm{Mo}$. The results are in qualitative agreement with the experimental results, supporting a collective interpretation of the low-spin states for these transitional nuclei.

A model for high-energy, small-angle pion-nucleus bremsstrahlung, ${\pi }^{-}+A\to {\pi }^{-}+\gamma +A$, is developed within the Glauber diffraction theory. Special attention is focused on the possibility of measuring the pion polarizability in such reactions. That is the case under the Coulomb peak, provided the bremsstrahlung photon carries practically all the energy of the incident pion. Only radiation from external legs is considered.