Background: Besides its intrinsic value as a fundamental nuclear-structure observable, the weak-charge density of ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$—a quantity that is closely related to its neutron distribution—is of fundamental importance in constraining the equation of state of neutron-rich matter.

Purpose: To assess the impact that a second electroweak measurement of the weak-charge form factor of ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ may have on the determination of its overall weak-charge density.

Methods: Using the two putative experimental values of the form factor, together with a simple implementation of Bayes' theorem, we calibrate a theoretically sound—yet surprisingly little known—symmetrized Fermi function, that is characterized by a density and form factor that are both known exactly in closed form.

Results: Using the charge form factor of ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ as a proxy for its weak-charge form factor, we demonstrate that using only two experimental points to calibrate the symmetrized Fermi function is sufficient to accurately reproduce the experimental charge form factor over a significant range of momentum transfers.

Conclusions: It is demonstrated that a second measurement of the weak-charge form factor of ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ supplemented by a robust theoretical input in the form of the symmetrized Fermi function would place significant constraints on the neutron distribution of ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$. In turn, such constraints will become vital in the interpretation of hadronic experiments that will probe the neutron-rich skin of exotic nuclei at future radioactive beam facilities.

We report the transverse energy $\left(E_{\mathrm{T}}\right)$ measured with ALICE at midrapidity in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathit{N}N}}=2.76$ TeV as a function of centrality. The transverse energy was measured using identified single-particle tracks. The measurement was cross checked using the electromagnetic calorimeters and the transverse momentum distributions of identified particles previously reported by ALICE. The results are compared to theoretical models as well as to results from other experiments. The mean $E_{\mathrm{T}}$ per unit pseudorapidity $\left(\eta \right)$, $\langle d{E}_{\mathrm{T}}/d\eta \rangle$, in 0%–5% central collisions is $1737\pm 6(\mathrm{stat}.)\pm 97(\mathrm{sys}.)$ GeV. We find a similar centrality dependence of the shape of $\langle d{E}_{\mathrm{T}}/d\eta \rangle$ as a function of the number of participating nucleons to that seen at lower energies. The growth in $\langle d{E}_{\mathrm{T}}/d\eta \rangle$ at the LHC energies exceeds extrapolations of low-energy data. We observe a nearly linear scaling of $\langle d{E}_{\mathrm{T}}/d\eta \rangle$ with the number of quark participants. With the canonical assumption of a 1 fm/$c$ formation time, we estimate that the energy density in 0%–5% central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathit{N}N}}=2.76$ TeV is $12.3\pm 1.0{\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{fm}}^3$ and that the energy density at the most central $80{\text{fm}}^2$ of the collision is at least $21.5\pm 1.7{\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{fm}}^3$. This is roughly 2.3 times that observed in 0%–5% central Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathit{N}N}}=200$ GeV.

The ${\mu }^{-}+{}^3\mathrm{H}\to {\nu }_{\mu }+n+n+n$ capture reaction is studied under full inclusion of final-state interactions. Predictions for the three-body breakup of ${}^3\mathrm{H}$ are calculated with the AV18 potential, augmented by the Urbana IX three-nucleon force. Our results are based on the single-nucleon weak-current operator comprising the dominant relativistic corrections. This work is a natural extension of our investigations of the ${\mu }^{-}+{}^3\mathrm{He}\to {\nu }_{\mu }+{}^3\mathrm{H},{\mu }^{-}+{}^3\mathrm{He}\to {\nu }_{\mu }+n+d$ and ${\mu }^{-}+{}^3\mathrm{He}\to {\nu }_{\mu }+n+n+p$ capture reactions presented in Golak et al. [J. Golak, R. Skibiński, H. Witała, K. Topolnicki, A. E. Elmeshneb, H. Kamada, A. Nogga, and L. E. Marcucci, Phys. Rev. C 90, 024001 (2014)].

Isoscalar giant resonances in ${}^{94}\mathrm{Mo}$ have been studied with inelastic scattering of 240 MeV α particles at small angles including 0°. All of the expected energy-weighted sum rule (EWSR) for the isoscalar $E0$ resonance was found (112%). A significant portion of the EWSR was found for the isoscalar $E1$ (83%), $E2$ (61%), and the high-energy octupole $E3$ (46%) resonances. The strength distributions are compared with the predictions from Hartree-Fock random-phase-approximation calculations with the KDE0v1 Skyrme-type interaction.

The average total kinetic energy $\left(\overline{TKE}\right)$ in ${}^{239}\mathrm{Pu}(n,f)$ has been measured for incident neutron energies between 0.5 and 50 MeV. The experiment was performed at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) using the neutron time-of-flight technique, and the kinetic energy of fission fragments post-neutron emission was measured in a double Frisch-gridded ionization chamber. This represents the first experimental study of the energy dependence of $\overline{TKE}$ in ${}^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$ above neutron energies of 6 MeV.

The ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}({}^4\mathrm{He},4\alpha )n$ breakup reaction has been studied at beam energies of 27.0, 27.5, and 28.0 MeV. A comparison with previous measurements of the ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}({}^4\mathrm{He},{}^8\mathrm{Be}){}^8\mathrm{Be}$ excitation function and ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}({}^{16}\mathrm{O},4\alpha ){}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ breakup channel suggests the ${}^8\mathrm{Be}_{\mathrm{gs}}+{}^8\mathrm{Be}_{\mathrm{gs}}$ decay of ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ is observed from a possible $2^{+}$ state at $17.3\pm 0.2$ MeV, a $4^{+}$ state at $18.0\pm 0.2$ MeV, a $2^{+}$ or $4^{+}$ state at $19.4\pm 0.2$ MeV, and a $4^{+}$ or $6^{+}$ state at $21.0\pm 0.2$ MeV. The $2^{+}$ or $4^{+}$ assignment for the ($19.4\pm 0.2$)-MeV state appears to be supported by the relative cross sections expected for resonant and sequential breakup reactions.

The finite-size correction to $\beta$ decay plays an important role in determining the expected antineutrino spectra from reactors at a level that is important for the reactor-neutrino anomaly. Here we express the leading-order finite-size correction to allowed $\beta$ decay in terms of Zemach moments. We calculate the Zemach moments within a Hartree-Fock model using a Skyrme-like energy density functional. We find that the Zemach moments are increased relative to predictions based on the simple assumption of identical uniform nuclear charge and weak transition densities. However, for allowed ground-state to ground-state transitions in medium and heavy nuclei, the detailed nuclear-structure calculations do not change the finite-size corrections significantly from the simple model predictions, and are only 10–15% larger than the latter even though the densities differ significantly.

To sustain a neutron star with about two times the solar mass, multibaryons including hyperons are expected to produce repulsive effects in the interior of its high-baryon-density region. To examine possible quark-Pauli repulsion among the baryons, we solve the eigenvalue problem of the quark antisymmetrizer for three octet-baryons that are described by most compact spatial configurations. We find that the Pauli blocking effect is weak in the $\mathrm{\Lambda }nn$ system, while it is strong in the ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{-}nn$ system. The appearance of the ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{-}$ hyperon is suppressed in the neutron star interior but no quark-Pauli repulsion effectively works for the $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ hyperon.

The electric quadrupole moment of the ${}_{13}{}^{33}\mathrm{Al}_{20}$ ground state, located at the border of the island of inversion, was obtained using continuous-beam $\beta$-detected nuclear quadrupole resonance ($\beta$-NQR). From the measured quadrupole coupling constant ${\nu }_Q=2.31\left(4\right)$ MHz in an $\alpha -{\mathrm{Al}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$ crystal, a precise value for the electric quadrupole moment is extracted: $\left|Q_s\left({}^{33}\mathrm{Al}\right)\right|=141\left(3\right)$ mb. A comparison with large-scale shell model calculations shows that ${}^{33}\mathrm{Al}$ has at least 50% intruder configurations in the ground state wave function, favoring the excitation of two neutrons across the $N=20$ shell gap. ${}^{33}\mathrm{Al}$ therefore clearly marks the gradual transition north of the deformed Na and Mg nuclei towards the normal $Z\ge 14$ isotopes.

The target-mass number dependence of nucleon-nucleon pairs with short-range correlations is explored in a physically transparent geometrical model within a zero-range approximation. The observed $A$ dependence of 2-nucleon ejection cross sections in $(e,e^{\prime })$ reactions is found to reflect the mass dependence of nuclear density distributions. A parametrization of this $A$ dependence is given. The $A$ dependence of proton-proton vs proton-neutron pairs relative to ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ is also analyzed in this model. It can be understood using simple combinatorics without any additional isospin dependence.

In high-energy heavy-ion collisions, forward-backward multiplicity (FB) correlation strengths are affected greatly by centrality fluctuation and centrality window width. A method called ${\mathrm{FB}}_{\mathrm{relative}}$ is raised to reduce or remove the influence. This method is tested by a Monte Carlo simulation and is compared with the ${\mathrm{FB}}_{\mathrm{average}}$ and ${\mathrm{FB}}_{\mathrm{profile}}$ methods. The ${\mathrm{FB}}_{\mathrm{relative}}$ method is also used for the hijing event generator of Au+Au collisions, and comparisons between the correlation strengths of different collision energies $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ from 7.7 to 200 GeV are shown. As a result, the correlation strengths are all very weak, and the similarities of correlation strengths $b$ of different centrality windows within 0%–50% are obvious, and it is observed that the correlation strengths decrease with the increasing pseudorapidity gap at $\left|\eta \right|<2$.

The two-particle momentum correlation between the proton $\left(p\right)$ and the omega baryon $\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)$ in high-energy heavy ion collisions is studied to unravel the possible spin-2 $p\mathrm{\Omega }$ dibaryon recently suggested by lattice QCD simulations. The ratio of correlation functions between small and large collision systems, $C_{\mathrm{SL}}\left(Q\right)$, is proposed to be a new measure to extract the strong $p\mathrm{\Omega }$ interaction without much contamination from the Coulomb attraction. Relevance of this quantity to the experimental observables in heavy ion collisions is also discussed.

Directed and elliptic flows of neutrons and light-charged particles were measured for the reaction ${}^{197}\mathrm{Au}+{}^{197}\mathrm{Au}$ at 400 MeV/nucleon incident energy within the ASY-EOS experimental campaign at the GSI laboratory. The detection system consisted of the Large Area Neutron Detector (LAND), combined with parts of the CHIMERA multidetector, the ALADIN Time-of-flight Wall, and the Washington University Microball detector. The latter three arrays were used for the event characterization and reaction-plane reconstruction. In addition, an array of triple telescopes, KRATTA was used for complementary measurements of the isotopic composition and flows of light-charged particles. From the comparison of the elliptic-flow ratio of neutrons with respect to charged particles with UrQMD predictions, a value $\gamma =0.72\pm 0.19$ is obtained for the power-law coefficient describing the density dependence of the potential part in the parametrization of the symmetry energy. It represents a new and more stringent constraint for the regime of suprasaturation density and confirms, with a considerably smaller uncertainty, the moderately soft to linear density dependence deduced from the earlier FOPI-LAND data. The densities probed are shown to reach beyond twice saturation.

The nonlocal dispersive optical model (NLDOM) nucleon potentials are used for the first time in the adiabatic analysis of a $(d,p)$ reaction to generate distorted waves both in the entrance and exit channels. These potentials were designed and fitted by Mahzoon et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 162503 (2014)] to constrain relevant single-particle physics in a consistent way by imposing the fundamental properties, such as nonlocality, energy-dependence and dispersive relations, that follow from the complex nature of nuclei. However, the NLDOM prediction for the ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}(d,p){}^{41}\mathrm{Ca}$ cross sections at low energy, typical for some modern radioactive beam ISOL (isotope separation online) facilities, is about 70% higher than the experimental data despite being reduced by the NLDOM spectroscopic factor of 0.73. This overestimation comes most likely either from insufficient absorption or due to constructive interference between ingoing and outgoing waves. This indicates strongly that additional physics arising from many-body effects is missing in the widely used current versions of $(d,p)$ reaction theories.

Due to the large value of the scattering length in nuclear systems, standard density-functional theories based on effective interactions usually fail to reproduce the nuclear Fermi-liquid behavior both at very low densities and close to equilibrium. Guided on one side by the success of the Skyrme density functional and, on the other side, by resummation techniques used in effective field theories for systems with large scattering lengths, a new energy-density functional is proposed. This functional, adjusted on microscopic calculations, reproduces the nuclear equations of state of neutron and symmetric matter at various densities. Furthermore, it provides reasonable saturation properties as well as an appropriate density dependence for the symmetry energy.

A nuclear-decay spectroscopy study of the neutron-deficient isotope ${}^{196}\mathrm{At}$ is reported where an isotopically pure beam was produced using the selective Resonance Ionization Laser Ion Source and On-Line Isotope Mass Separator (CERN). The fine-structure $\alpha$ decay of ${}^{196}\mathrm{At}$ allowed the low-energy excited states in the daughter nucleus ${}^{192}\mathrm{Bi}$ to be investigated. A $\beta$-delayed fission study of ${}^{196}\mathrm{At}$ was also performed. A mixture of symmetric and asymmetric fission-fragment mass distributions of the daughter isotope ${}^{196}\mathrm{Po}$ (populated by $\beta$ decay of ${}^{196}\mathrm{At}$) was deduced based on the measured fission-fragment energies. A $\beta \text{DF}$ probability $P_{\beta \mathrm{DF}}\left({}^{196}\mathrm{At}\right)=9\left(1\right)\times {10}^{-5}$ was determined.

Excited states in ${}^{137}\mathrm{Xe}$ have been studied by using the near-barrier single-neutron transfer reactions ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}({}^{136}\mathrm{Xe},{}^{12}\mathrm{C}\gamma ){}^{137}\mathrm{Xe}$ and ${}^9\mathrm{Be}({}^{136}\mathrm{Xe},{}^8\mathrm{Be}\gamma ){}^{137}\mathrm{Xe}$ in inverse kinematics. Particle-$\gamma$ and particle-$\gamma \gamma$ coincidence measurements have been performed with the Phoswich Wall and Digital Gammasphere detector arrays. Evidence is found for a $13/2_2^{+}$ level $\left(E=3137\mathrm{keV}\right)$ and for additional high-lying $3/2^{-}$ and $5/2^{-}$ states. The results are discussed in the framework of realistic shell-model calculations. These calculations are also extended to the $13/2_1^{+}$ and $13/2_2^{+}$ levels in the $N=83$ isotonic chain. They indicate that there is a need for a value of the neutron $0i_{13/2}$ single-particle energy $\left(E_{\mathrm{SPE}}=2366\mathrm{keV}\right)$ lower than the one proposed in the literature. It is also demonstrated that the population patterns of the $j=\ell \pm 1/2$ single-particle states in ${}^{137}\mathrm{Xe}$ are different for the two targets used in these measurements and the implications of this effect are addressed.

Systematic calculations on the spectroscopy and transition properties of even-even Te isotopes are carried out by using the large-scale shell-model configuration-interaction approach with a realistic interaction. These nuclei are of particular interest since their yrast spectra show a vibrational-like equally spaced pattern whereas the few known $E2$ transitions show rotational-like behavior. This cannot be explained by available collective models. My calculations reproduce well the equally spaced spectra of those isotopes as well as the constant behavior for the $B\left(E2\right)$ values of ${}^{114}\mathrm{Te}$. The calculated $B\left(E2\right)$ values of neutron-deficient and heavier Te isotopes show contrasting different behaviors along the yrast line. The $B\left(E2\right)$ of light isotopes can exhibit a nearly constant behavior up to high spins. It is shown that this is related to the enhanced neutron-proton correlation when approaching $N=50$.

We evaluate the second-order (beyond-mean-field) contribution to the equation of state of nuclear matter with the effective Skyrme force and use cutoff and dimensional regularizations to treat the ultraviolet divergence produced by the zero-range character of this interaction. An adjustment of the force parameters is then performed in both cases to remove any double counting generated by the explicit computation of beyond-mean-field corrections with the Skyrme force. In addition, we include at second order the rearrangement terms associated with the density-dependent part of the Skyrme force and discuss their effect. Sets of parameters are proposed to define new effective forces which are specially designed for second-order calculations in nuclear matter.

Light charged particles emitted in proton-induced fission reactions on ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ have been measured at different kinetic energies: $370A,500A$, and $650A$ MeV. The experiment was performed by the SOFIA Collaboration at the GSI facilities in Darmstadt (Germany). The inverse kinematics technique was combined with a setup especially designed to measure light charged particles in coincidence with fission fragments. This measurement allowed us, for the first time, to obtain correlations between the light charged particles emitted during the fission process and the charge distributions of the fission fragments. These correlations were compared with different model calculations to assess the ground-to-saddle dynamics. The results confirm that transient and dissipative effects are required for an accurate description of the fission observables.