Background: Long-baseline experiments such as the planned deep underground neutrino experiment (DUNE) require theoretical descriptions of the complete event in a neutrino-nucleus reaction. Since nuclear targets are used this requires a good understanding of neutrino-nucleus interactions.

Purpose: Develop a consistent theory and code framework for the description of lepton-nucleus interactions that can be used to describe not only inclusive cross sections, but also the complete final state of the reaction.

Methods: The Giessen-Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (GiBUU) implementation of quantum-kinetic transport theory is used, with improvements in its treatment of the nuclear ground state and of 2p2h interactions. For the latter an empirical structure function from electron scattering data is used as a basis.

Results: Results for electron-induced inclusive cross sections are given as a necessary check for the overall quality of this approach. The calculated neutrino-induced inclusive double-differential cross sections show good agreement data from neutrino and antineutrino reactions for different neutrino flavors at MiniBooNE and T2K. Inclusive double-differential cross sections for MicroBooNE, NOvA, MINERvA, and LBNF/DUNE are given.

Conclusions: Based on the GiBUU model of lepton-nucleus interactions a good theoretical description of inclusive electron-, neutrino-, and antineutrino-nucleus data over a wide range of energies, different neutrino flavors, and different experiments is now possible. Since no tuning is involved this theory and code should be reliable also for new energy regimes and target masses.

We present measurements of second-order azimuthal anisotropy $\left(v_2\right)$ at midrapidity $\left(\right|y|<1.0)$ for light nuclei $d,t,{}^3\mathrm{He}$ (for $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$, 62.4, 39, 27, 19.6, 11.5, and 7.7 GeV) and antinuclei $\overline{d}$ ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$, 62.4, 39, 27, and 19.6 GeV) and ${}^3\overline{\mathrm{He}}$ ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV) in the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) experiment. The $v_2$ for these light nuclei produced in heavy-ion collisions is compared with those for $p$ and $\overline{p}$. We observe mass ordering in nuclei $v_2\left(p_T\right)$ at low transverse momenta ($p_T<2.0$ GeV/$c$). We also find a centrality dependence of $v_2$ for $d$ and $\overline{d}$. The magnitude of $v_2$ for $t$ and ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ agree within statistical errors. Light-nuclei $v_2$ are compared with predictions from a blast-wave model. Atomic mass number $\left(A\right)$ scaling of light-nuclei $v_2\left(p_T\right)$ seems to hold for $p_T/A<1.5\mathrm{GeV}/c$. Results on light-nuclei $v_2$ from a transport-plus-coalescence model are consistent with the experimental measurements.

We determine the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter with the inclusion of hyperons in a self-consistent manner by using a modified quark meson coupling model where the confining interaction for quarks inside a baryon is represented by a phenomenological average potential in an equally mixed scalar-vector harmonic form. The hadron-hadron interaction in nuclear matter is then realized by introducing additional quark couplings to $\sigma ,\omega$, and $\rho$ mesons through mean-field approximations. The effect of a nonlinear $\omega \text{−}\rho$ term on the EOS is studied. The hyperon couplings are fixed from the optical potential values and the mass-radius curve is determined satisfying the maximum mass constraint of $2{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ for neutron stars, as determined in recent measurements of the pulsar PSR J0348+0432. We also observe that there is no significant advantage of introducing the nonlinear $\omega \text{−}\rho$ term in the context of obtaining the star mass constraint in the present set of parametrizations.

The relative yield of complete fusion and quasifission components for the ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}+{}^{204}\mathrm{Pb}, {}^{19}\mathrm{F}+{}^{197}\mathrm{Au}, {}^{30}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{186}\mathrm{W}$, and ${}^{48}\mathrm{Ca}+{}^{168}\mathrm{Er}$ reactions which all lead to the compound nucleus ${}^{216}\mathrm{Ra}$ are analyzed to calculate the entrance channel effects by comparison of capture, complete fusion, and quasifission cross sections, emission barriers ($B_{\mathrm{fus}}^{*},B_{qf}$), as well as complete fusion probability estimated by statistical method within the framework of the dinuclear system model. The difference among complete fusion probabilities calculated by the dinuclear system model for different entrance channels can be explained by the hindrance to complete fusion due to the larger inner fusion barrier $B_{\mathrm{fus}}^{*}$ for the transformation of the dinuclear system into a compound nucleus and the increase of the quasifission contribution due to the decreasing of the emission barrier $B_{qf}$ of quasifission as a function of the angular momentum. Although these reactions with different entrance channels populate the same compound nucleus ${}^{216}\mathrm{Ra}$ at similar excitation energies, the model predicts the negligible quasifission probability for reactions having higher entrance channel mass asymmetry and the dominant decay channel is complete fission. For reactions induced by massive projectiles such as $\mathrm{Si}$ and $\mathrm{Ca}$ having lower entrance channel mass asymmetry, the quasifission component is dominant in the evolution of dinuclear system, and the fusion process is extremely hindered.

We analyze the directed flow of protons and pions in high-energy heavy-ion collisions in the incident energy range from $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=7.7$ to 27 GeV within a microscopic transport model. Standard hadronic transport approaches do not describe the collapse of directed flow below $\sqrt{s_{NN}}\simeq 20$ GeV. By contrast, a model that simulates effects of a softening of the equation of state descibes well the behavior of directed flow data recently obtained by the STAR Collaboration [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 162301 (2014)]. We give a detailed analysis of how directed flow is generated. Particularly, we found that softening of the effective equation of state at the overlapping region of two nuclei, i.e., the reaction stages where the system reaches high baryon density state, is needed to explain the observed collapse of proton directed flow within a hadronic transport approach.

We investigate the appearance of di-neutron bound states in pure neutron matter within the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach at zero temperature. We consider the Argonne $v_{18}$ and Paris bare interactions as well as chiral two- and three-nucleon forces. Self-consistent single-particle potentials are calculated by controlling explicitly singularities in the $g$ matrix associated with bound states. Di-neutrons are loosely bound, with binding energies below 1 MeV, but are unambiguously present for Fermi momenta below $1{\mathrm{fm}}^{-1}$ for all interactions. Within the same framework we are able to calculate and characterize di-neutron bound states, obtaining mean radii as high as $\sim 110$ fm. Implications of these findings are presented and discussed.

We have developed a new method to calculate the occupancies of single particle levels in atomic nuclei. This method has been developed in the context of the microscopic interacting boson model, in which neutron and proton degrees of freedom are treated explicitly. The energies of the single particle levels constitute a very important input for the calculation of the occupancies in this method. In principle these energies can be considered as input parameters that can be fitted to reproduce the experimental occupancies. Instead of fitting, in this study we have extracted the single particle energies from experimental data on nuclei with a particle more or one particle less than a shell closure. We provide the sets of these single particle energies suitable for several major shells and apply our method to calculate the occupancies of several nuclei of interest in neutrinoless double-$\beta$ decay using these sets. Our results are compared with other theoretical calculations and experimental occupancies, when available.

The lifetime of the $\left(11/2^{+}\right)$ state in the band above the proton-emitting $\left(3/2^{+}\right)$ state in ${}^{113}\mathrm{Cs}$ has been measured to be $\tau =24\left(6\right)$ ps from a recoil-decay-tagged differential-plunger experiment. The measured lifetime was used to deduce the deformation of the states using wave functions from a nonadiabatic quasiparticle model to independently calculate both proton-emission and electromagnetic $\gamma$-ray transition rates as a function of deformation. The only quadrupole deformation, which was able to reproduce the experimental excitation energies of the states, the electromagnetic decay rate of the $\left(11/2^{+}\right)$ state and the proton-emission rate of the $\left(3/2^{+}\right)$ state, was found to be ${\beta }_2=0.22\left(6\right)$. This deformation is in agreement with the earlier proton emission studies which concluded that ${}^{113}\mathrm{Cs}$ was best described as a deformed proton emitter, however, it is now more firmly supported by the present measurement of the electromagnetic transition rate.

We study the fluctuations of the anisotropy of the energy density profile created in a high-energy collision at the LHC. We show that the anisotropy in harmonic $n$ has generic non-Gaussian fluctuations. We argue that these non-Gaussianities have a universal character for small systems such as p+Pb collisions, but not for large systems such as Pb+Pb collisions where they depend on the underlying non-Gaussian statistics of the initial density profile. We generalize expressions for the eccentricity cumulants ${\varepsilon }_2\left\{4\right\}$ and ${\varepsilon }_3\left\{4\right\}$ previously obtained within the independent-source model to a general fluctuating initial density profile.

We construct a coordinate-space potential based on pionless effective field theory (EFT) with a Gaussian regulator. Charge-symmetry breaking is included through the Coulomb potential and through two- and three-body contact interactions. Starting with the effective field theory potential, we apply the stochastic variational method to determine the ground states of nuclei with mass number $A\le 4$. At next-to-next-to-leading order, two out of three independent three-body parameters can be fitted to the three-body binding energies. To fix the remaining one, we look for a simultaneous description of the binding energy of ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ and the charge radii of ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ and ${}^4\mathrm{He}$. We show that at the order considered we can find an acceptable solution, within the uncertainty of the expansion. We find that the EFT expansion shows good agreement with empirical data within the estimated uncertainty, even for a system as dense as ${}^4\mathrm{He}$.

The study of the coupling to collective states of the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ projectile and ${}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ target in fusion mechanism is reported. Understanding such couplings is important as they influence the barrier height and the formation probability of the compound nuclei, which in turn may be related to the synthesis of superheavy elements in heavier systems. In the present work, before performing the coupled-channel calculations, we wish to obtain an experimental signature of coupling to projectile and target excitation through barrier distribution (BD) study. To this end, the BDs of the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ and ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ systems have been compared using existing fusion data, scaled to compensate for the differences between the nominal Coulomb barriers and the respective coupling strengths. However, the large error bars on the high-energy side of the fusion BD prevent any definite identification of such signatures. We have, therefore, performed a quasi-elastic (QE) scattering experiment for the heavier ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ system and compared its results with existing QE data for the ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ projectile. Since QE BDs are precise at higher energies, the comparison has shown that the BD of ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ is similar to that of ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ to a large extent except for a peaklike structure on the higher energy side. The similarity shows that the ${}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ deformation plays a major role in the fusion mechanism of ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ system. The peaklike structure is attributed to ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ excitation. In contrast with previous studies, it is found that a coupled-channel calculation with vibrational coupling to the first $2^{+}$ state of ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ reproduces this structure rather well. However, an almost identical result is found with the rotational coupling scheme if one considers the large positive hexadecapole deformation of the projectile. A value around that given by Möller and Nix $\left({\beta }_4\approx 0.25\right)$ leads to a strong cancellation in the re-orientation term that couples the $2^{+}$ state back to itself, making that state look vibrational in this process. Thus, unlike the existing fusion data, our new QE results contain subtle details about the fusion mechanism of ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{154}\mathrm{Sm}$ system. They even show a sensitivity to the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ hexadecapole deformation and hence may be capable of giving a physically reasonable estimate for ${\beta }_4$ in an indirect way.

Experimental data show that the elastic scattering cross sections of the neutron-rich nucleus ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$ are greatly reduced by the coupling effects from the breakup channels, while those of the proton-rich nucleus ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ are not. Such difference is found to persist in results of systematic calculations of ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ elastic scattering from ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ at 60 and 170.3 MeV and from ${}^{64}\mathrm{Zn}$ at 32 and 86 MeV, and ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$ elastic scattering from ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ at 55 and 143 MeV and from ${}^{64}\mathrm{Zn}$ at 29 and 66 MeV with the continuum-discretized coupled channel (CDCC) method. The Coulomb and centrifugal barriers experienced by the valence proton in the ground state of ${}^8\mathrm{B}$, which do not exist for the valence neutron in the ground state of ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$, are found to be the reason for such differences in the angular distributions of elastic scattering cross sections of these two weakly bound nuclei.

We study the head-on collision of propagating waves due to perturbations in quark gluon plasmas. We use the Massachusetts Institute of Technology bag model, hydrodynamics equation, and suitable equation of state for describing the time evolution of such localized waves. A nonlinear differential equation is derived for the propagation of small amplitude localized waves using the reductive perturbation method. We show that these waves are unstable and amplitude of the left-moving (right-moving) wave increases (decreases) after the collision, and so they reach the borders of a quark gluon plasma fireball with different amplitudes. Indeed we show that such arrangements are created because of the geometrical symmetries of the medium.

Scattering of protons with transversal polarization $p_y^p$ on deuterons with tensor polarization $P_{xz}$ provides a null-test signal for time-reversal (T) invariance violating but parity (P) conserving effects. We calculate the corresponding null-test observable at beam energies $100\text{–}1000\mathrm{MeV}$ within the spin-dependent Glauber theory considering T-violating P-conserving nucleon-nucleon interactions. The $S$-wave component of the deuteron wave function as well as the $D$ wave are taken into account and the latter is found to play an important role for the magnitude and the energy dependence of the observable in question. Specifically, with inclusion of the $D$ wave the maximum of the obtained signal is shifted to higher beam energies, i.e., to $700\text{–}800$ MeV.

The electric dipole polarizability quantifies the low-energy behavior of the dipole strength and is related to critical observables such as the radii of the proton and neutron distributions. Its computation is challenging because most of the dipole strength lies in the scattering continuum. In this paper we combine integral transforms with the coupled-cluster method and compute the dipole polarizability using bound-state techniques. Employing different interactions from chiral effective field theory, we confirm the strong correlation between the dipole polarizability and the charge radius, and study its dependence on three-nucleon forces. We find good agreement with data for the ${}^4\mathrm{He},{}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}$, and ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ nuclei, and predict the dipole polarizability for the rare nucleus ${}^{22}\mathrm{O}$.

Excited states with intermediate and high spins in ${}^{33}\mathrm{P}$ and ${}^{33}\mathrm{S}$ have been populated using the ${}^{26}\mathrm{Mg}\left({}^{13}\mathrm{C},np\alpha \right)$ and ${}^{26}\mathrm{Mg}\left({}^{13}\mathrm{C},2n\alpha \right)$ fusion-evaporation reactions. The level schemes of both nuclei have been considerably extended. Utilizing $\gamma \gamma$ angular correlations the spin-parity assignment of the new excited states in ${}^{33}\mathrm{P}$ has been investigated. The experimentally determined results from both nuclei were compared to $0\hslash \omega$ and $1\hslash \omega$ truncated p-sd-pf shell-model calculations utilizing the PSDPF interaction, showing a very good agreement between experiment and theory.

It is known that the $\alpha$ particle reduced width has the largest values in the region above ${}^{100}\mathrm{Sn}$, and this behavior is usually attributed to the proton-neutron correlations. To reproduce the reduced $\alpha$-decay width we use an additional pocket-like surface potential in the single-particle mean field that simulates four-body correlations. We show that the strength of this interaction has a universal linear dependence on the experimental reduced width above the double magic nuclei ${}^{100}\mathrm{Sn}$ and ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$. Moreover, we demonstrate that proton-neutron pairing correlations have a small influence on this dependence and therefore cannot explain the larger reduced decay widths above ${}^{100}\mathrm{Sn}$. We give an indication of the possibility of detecting $\mathrm{Sn}+n\alpha$ structures as dipole Pigmy-like resonances.

Realistic density dependent CDM3Yn versions of the M3Y interaction have been used in an extended Hartree-Fock (HF) calculation of nuclear matter (NM), with the nucleon single-particle potential determined from the total NM energy based on the Hugenholtz–van Hove theorem that gives rise naturally to a rearrangement term (RT). Using the RT of the single-nucleon potential obtained exactly at different NM densities, the density and energy dependence of the CDM3Yn interactions was modified to account properly for both the RT and observed energy dependence of the nucleon optical potential. Based on a local density approximation, the double-folding model of the nucleus-nucleus optical potential has been extended to take into account consistently the rearrangement effect and energy dependence of the nuclear mean-field potential, using the modified CDM3Yn interactions. The extended double-folding model was applied to study the elastic ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}+{}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ and ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}+{}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ scattering at the refractive energies, where the Airy structure of the nuclear rainbow has been well established. The RT was found to affect significantly the real nucleus-nucleus optical potential at small internuclear distances, giving a potential strength close to that implied by the realistic optical model description of the Airy oscillation.

The uncertainties in neutron star radii and crust properties due to our limited knowledge of the equation of state are quantitatively analyzed. We first demonstrate the importance of a unified microscopic description for the different baryonic densities of the star. If the pressure functional is obtained matching a crust and a core equation of state based on models with different properties at nuclear matter saturation, the uncertainties can be as large as $\sim 30$ % for the crust thickness and 4% for the radius. Necessary conditions for causal and thermodynamically consistent matchings between the core and the crust are formulated and their consequences examined. A large set of unified equations of state for purely nucleonic matter is obtained based on twenty-four Skyrme interactions and nine relativistic mean-field nuclear parametrizations. In addition, for relativistic models fifteen equations of state including a transition to hyperonic matter at high density are presented. All these equations of state have in common the property of describing a $2M_{\odot }$ star and of being causal within stable neutron stars. Spans of $\sim 3$ and $\sim 4$ km are obtained for the radius of, respectively, $1.0M_{\odot }$ and $2.0M_{\odot }$ stars. Applying a set of nine further constraints from experiment and ab initio calculations the uncertainty is reduced to $\sim 1$ and 2 km, respectively. These residual uncertainties reflect lack of constraints at large densities and insufficient information on the density dependence of the equation of state near the nuclear matter saturation point. The most important parameter to be constrained is shown to be the symmetry energy slope $L$. Indeed, this parameter exhibits a linear correlation with the stellar radius, which is particularly clear for small mass stars around $1.0M_{\odot }$. The other equation-of-state parameters do not show clear correlations with the radius, within the present uncertainties. Potential constraints on $L$, the neutron star radius, and the equation of state from observations of thermal states of neutron stars are also discussed. The unified equations of state are made available in the Supplemental Materials and via the CompOSE database.