Nuclear polarization plays an essential role in precision measurements, symmetry tests, and emerging quantum technologies, yet efficient polarization of heavy nuclei remains a major challenge. We propose an efficient, intense-laser-based approach that achieves high-efficiency polarization of heavy nuclei through the nonlinear interaction of circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses with hydrogenlike ions. This scheme enables rapid transfer of angular momentum from light to the nucleus. Numerical simulations show that a single pulse can generate polarization exceeding 10%, while a pulse sequence can drive the system to near-unity polarization. The method is broadly applicable to heavy ions with large hyperfine splittings, as demonstrated for ${}^{229}\mathrm{Th}$, ${}^{205}\mathrm{Pb}$, and ${}^{209}\mathrm{Bi}$. The ability to produce near-complete polarization of large-spin nuclei and heavy ions opens new avenues for nuclear physics and nucleus-based quantum technologies.

Entanglement is a key resource in quantum information science, yet its properties and applications in nuclear systems remain largely unexplored. Here, using proton-proton scattering as a quantum laboratory, we report the emergence of a near-pure Bell-triplet state at a laboratory energy of 151 MeV and a center-of-mass scattering angle of 90°. In this unique kinematic regime, the scattering amplitude functions as a transition operator connecting distinct Bell states. Building upon this emergent resource, we propose a quantum teleportation protocol for proton spins, exploiting the intrinsic Hamiltonian of the strong interaction to perform the requisite Bell measurement effectively. These findings effectively bridge few-body nuclear physics and quantum technology, establishing proton-proton scattering as both a source of high-fidelity entanglement and a natural processor for quantum information.

Interactions derived from effective field theories of quantum chromodynamics have thus far failed to bind calcium nuclei beyond neutron number $N=40$, while nuclear density functionals typically place the neutron drip line near ${}^{70}\mathrm{Ca}$, at $N=50$. We present the chiral interaction ${\mathrm{N}}^3{\mathrm{LO}}_{\mathrm{Texas}}$, a combination of two- and three-nucleon potentials at fourth and third chiral order, respectively, with low-energy constants optimized using emulator-accelerated fits to few- and many-body data. This interaction accurately reproduces binding energies and charge radii of key nuclei with mass number $A=3$ to 208, important excited states, and nuclear matter near saturation. Using ab initio methods, coupled cluster and valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group, we find that the calcium two-neutron drip line extends to ${}^{71}\mathrm{Ca}$.

The first measurement of coherent $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S})$ meson photoproduction off heavy nuclei is performed using ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions collected by the CMS experiment at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The nuclear gluonic structure is probed at a nucleon momentum fraction of order $x\sim {10}^{-3}$, determined by the kinematics of the process. Owing to the large $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S})$ mass, the measurement reaches the highest scale accessible so far through coherent vector-meson photoproduction, ${\mu }^2=22.4{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$, where nonlinear quantum chromodynamics effects are expected to be minimal. In the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S})$ rapidity range $|y|<1$, the ratio of the measured photoproduction cross section to a baseline model prediction that neglects nuclear effects is $S_{\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S})}=0.25\pm 0.06(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.02(\mathrm{syst})$, thereby demonstrating nuclear suppression in this process. Expressed in terms of a nuclear gluon suppression factor, the result yields $R_g^{\mathrm{Pb}}(x\approx {10}^{-3},{\mu }^2=22.4{\mathrm{GeV}}^2)=0.55\pm 0.12(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.02(\mathrm{syst})$. The measured $S_{\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S})}$ is only slightly larger than the values previously reported for coherent $\varphi$ photoproduction, despite the probed ${\mu }^2$ differing by approximately 2 orders of magnitude.

Event-by-event transverse momentum correlations are sensitive to the equation of state of strongly interacting matter and are expected to exhibit anomalous fluctuations in the vicinity of the QCD critical point. We report the first measurements of two-particle transverse momentum ($p_{\mathrm{T}}$) correlations for mid-rapidity charged particles in fixed-target $\mathrm{Au}+\mathrm{Au}$ collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=3.0–7.7\mathrm{GeV}$, measured by the STAR experiment during the Beam Energy Scan (BES) Phase II program. The dependence of the scaled correlator on the number of participating nucleons ($N_{\mathrm{part}}$) is studied to test expectations from an independent-source scenario, where the correlations are expected to scale as $1/\sqrt{N_{\mathrm{part}}}$. We observe a clear breakdown of the expected scaling behavior in central collisions and identify a statistically significant nonmonotonic dependence of the $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ correlations on collision energy, with a significance of approximately $5\sigma$. In contrast, transport-model calculations and data from mid-central collisions yield significances of only $2\sigma$ and $1.4\sigma$, respectively—insufficient to support a claim of nonmonotonicity. These observations provide new constraints on the equation of state at high baryon density and may be sensitive to the presence of a QCD critical point.

In July 2025 the Large Hadron Collider collided ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}{}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ and ${}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}{}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$ isotopes in a quest to understand the physics of ultrarelativistic light ion collisions. One of the key motivations for this run was to discover partonic energy loss in systems with a small quark-gluon plasma. In this Letter we combine a Baier-Dokshitzer-Mueller-Peigné-Schiff and Zakharov based model, a weighted path based energy loss prescription, and jewel together with two realistic geometries of the ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ and ${}^{20}\mathrm{Ne}$ isotopes. The different sizes of the ions affect the energy loss in characteristically different ways depending on the model.

We investigated the $\overline{K}$-nucleus interaction through the simultaneous measurement of the inclusive ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}(K^{-},p)$ and exclusive $K^{-}$ escape ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}(K^{-},p{K}_{\mathrm{esc}}^{-})$ reactions at $1.8\mathrm{GeV}/c$ at J-PARC. The present measurement explicitly focuses on the $K^{-}$ escape process for the first time, successfully accomplishing a direct experimental determination of the imaginary part of the $K^{-}$ optical potential. The differential cross section for the $K^{-}$ escape reaction was determined to be $436\pm 6(\mathrm{stat}.)\pm 44(\mathrm{syst}.)\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{b}/\mathrm{sr}$. A simultaneous likelihood fit yielded real and imaginary potential strengths of $V_0=-{72}_{-5}^{+3}(\mathrm{stat}.{)}_{-8}^{+0}(\mathrm{syst}.)\mathrm{MeV}$ and $W_0=-{100}_{-1}^{+7}(\mathrm{stat}.{)}_{-16}^{+0}(\mathrm{syst}.)\mathrm{MeV}$ at the nuclear center, respectively. The derived $W_0$ is significantly stronger than that predicted by theoretical models based on one-nucleon processes, ssuggesting possible contributions from processes involving multiple nucleons.

We present results from a high precision experimental study of the nuclear modification of the longitudinal ($F_L$) to transverse ($F_1$) structure function ratio for bound nucleons in the resonance region. The inclusive electron scattering cross sections were measured in Jefferson Lab Experimental Hall C on carbon and deuterium nuclei for a large range of kinematics, allowing for separations of the longitudinal and transverse structure functions to be performed at a range of four-momentum transfer values $0.5\le Q^2\le 3.75{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. In contrast to the significant body of measurements of the nuclear modification of the $F_2$ structure function in the deep inelastic scattering region, there is very little on $F_L$ and $R=F_L/2x{F}_1$ in the region of the nucleon resonances. In this Letter we present measurements of the nuclear effect on $R$ for ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ ($R_C$) relative to deuterium ($R_D$). These results indicate regions in which in $R_C>R_D$, requiring that the nuclear modifications be different in all three structure functions, $F_2$, $F_1$, and $F_L$.

In the established paradigm of jet quenching in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, jets from initial hard parton scatterings are suppressed due to their interaction with the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), serving as crucial tomographic probes of QGP properties. Within the linear Boltzmann transport model, we find that the QGP is also capable of absorbing and reprocessing energy deposited by the hard jets into emergent jetlike objects, providing an alternative production mechanism of thermal recoil jets. These emergent thermal recoil jets exhibit distinct transverse momentum ($p_{\mathrm{T}}$) and jet-cone size ($R$) dependencies different from the hard jets, and interpret the puzzling observation of the enhanced yields of hadron triggered jets at large azimuthal angles relative to the away side and solely at small $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ and large $R$. These thermal recoil jets are predicted to have unique substructures, such as a jet shape that increases with radius and a thermal-like distribution of their constituents, which await verification in future experimental analyses.

We found that a heavy target such as Pb is most suitable for determining the proton distribution radii of unstable nuclei through charge-changing cross-section (${\sigma }_{\mathrm{cc}}$) measurements. Experimentally, low-$Z$ targets are routinely used to determine nucleon distribution radii of unstable isotopes. This approach has recently been extended to study proton distribution radii from ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{cc}}$ measurements. However, empirical scaling factors have to be introduced to apply the Glauber models. In the present Letter, we systematically investigated the scaling factor using 39 new ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{cc}}$ data of $18p$-shell nuclei on hydrogen, carbon, silver, and lead targets at around $240\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{nucleon}$. Together with the existing data, we reveal a universal dependence of the scaling factor on both the masses of target nuclei and the separation energies of projectile nuclei. The scaling factors decrease with increasing target-nucleus mass and converge to 1 for the highest-$Z$ target, making the scaling unnecessary. We conclude that instead of a low-$Z$ target, employing a heavy target such as Pb in ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{cc}}$ measurements is the best option to determine the proton distribution radii of unstable nuclei.

The ground state of the three-proton emitter ${}^{17}\mathrm{Na}$ has been identified. Energy correlations between the protons and the ${}^{14}\mathrm{O}$ residue indicate that its decay is sequential initiated by the emission of a single proton to the ground state of ${}^{16}\mathrm{Ne}$ followed by simultaneous emission of two protons to the ground state of ${}^{14}\mathrm{O}$, and the derived total decay energy is 4.45(3) MeV. The angular distribution of the proton from the first step indicates that this emission is $d$-wave and only consistent with a spin parity of $5/2^{+}$. This assignment is consistent with state-of-the-art Gamow shell-model calculations. As the ground state of ${}^{17}\mathrm{C}$ is $3/2^{+}$, the assigned spin parity of its mirror ${}^{17}\mathrm{Na}$ indicates that the pair presents a new case of ground-state mirror symmetry violation (GMSV). Unlike other GMSV cases, which arise solely from either a Coulomb induced shift or deformation effects, the ${}^{17}\mathrm{Na}/{}^{17}\mathrm{C}$ case is generated by differences in the many-body correlations.

We present converged ab initio calculations of short-range neutrinoless double-beta ($0\nu \beta \beta$)-decay nuclear matrix elements for the key experimental isotopes ${}^{76}\mathrm{Ge}$, ${}^{82}\mathrm{Se}$, ${}^{130}\mathrm{Te}$, and ${}^{136}\mathrm{Xe}$. Starting from different nuclear forces derived from chiral effective field theory, we apply the in-medium similarity renormalization group to obtain an effective valence-space Hamiltonian along with consistently transformed $0\nu \beta \beta$-decay operators. We then obtain a range of values for the matrix elements that is consistent with, but generally smaller than, those from phenomenology. Finally, we combine our results with current limits from $0\nu \beta \beta$-decay searches to obtain constraints for the sterile-neutrino mixing-mass parameter space when considering the inclusion of a fourth, sterile neutrino.

Nonthermal attractors govern the emergent self-similar dynamics of far-from-equilibrium quantum systems, from ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions to cold-atom experiments. Within the framework of adiabatic hydrodynamization, the approach to a nonthermal attractor is described by the decay of excited states of an effective Hamiltonian. Using an exactly solvable kinetic theory—the longitudinally expanding, overoccupied gluon plasma dominated by small-angle elastic scattering—we establish a direct correspondence between the eigenmodes of adiabatic hydrodynamization and the quasinormal mode spectrum of the nonthermal attractor. This equivalence suggests a general framework for identifying universal dynamical structures in nonequilibrium systems. As a byproduct, we derive analytic prescaling solutions for strongly longitudinally expanding systems.

Isotopic measurements of presolar silicon carbide grains from dying stars have revealed a puzzling overabundance of ${}^{94}\mathrm{Mo}$ that stellar nucleosynthesis models have failed to reproduce for two decades. This discrepancy challenged our understanding of the slow neutron-capture process ($s$-process) that forges approximately half of the elements heavier than iron. The key uncertainty lies at ${}^{94}\mathrm{Nb}$, a radioactive branching point where competition between neutron capture and beta decay governs the ${}^{94}\mathrm{Mo}$ production, yet the neutron-capture cross section had never been measured. Here, we report the first experimental determination of the ${}^{94}\mathrm{Nb}(\mathrm{n},\gamma ){}^{95}\mathrm{Nb}$ cross section important for Mo isotopic abundances. The measurement was enabled by a coordinated effort involving high-purity target preparation at Institute of Solid State and Materials Research Dresden, radioactive sample production at the Institut Laue-Langevin Grenoble, radiochemical characterization at Paul Scherrer Institut Villigen, and the time-of-flight CERN n_TOF facility using for the first time segmented total-energy detectors. Incorporation of the resulting Maxwellian-averaged cross section into fully coupled nucleosynthesis models of low-mass asymptotic giant-branch stars brings them into agreement with the presolar grain data. These results remove a major nuclear-physics input uncertainty at the ${}^{94}\mathrm{Nb}$ branching point and provide a firmer foundation for understanding the origin of ${}^{94}\mathrm{Mo}$ in the Solar System.

We study the spatiotemporal patterns of density fluctuations in ${}^{16,24}\mathrm{O}$ and ${}^{48}\mathrm{Ca}$ using nuclear interactions from chiral effective field theory and the time-dependent coupled-cluster method. We find that two-particle–two-hole excitations generate small-amplitude fluctuations that are fast, short-ranged, and of stochastic character.

The onset of nuclear effects in light-ion collisions is studied by measuring the ratio of $D^0$ meson production between NeNe and OO collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.36 TeV recorded by the LHCb detector. The $D^0$ meson yields are measured differentially in transverse momentum ($p_{\mathrm{T}}$) for $0.5<p_{\mathrm{T}}<20\mathrm{GeV}$ in the rapidity ($y$) region $2.0<y<4.5$, and are normalized to the total number of recorded inelastic nucleus-nucleus collisions in each data sample. The resulting production ratio shows evidence of variation as a function of $p_{\mathrm{T}}$, which is inconsistent with predictions based on nuclear modification of nucleon structure alone. This measurement is consistent with the onset of quark-gluon plasma production with increasing nucleus size in high-energy nuclear collisions.

We use heavy-nucleus effective field theory to compute radiative corrections to two-neutrino double-$\beta$ decay ($2\nu \beta \beta$). Our main result is the first derivation of a universal radiative-correction factor for double-weak decays—the analog of the Sirlin function in single-$\beta$ decay—independent of nuclear matrix elements and excitation energies. This “double-weak Sirlin function” depends on the individual electron energies as well as their relative angle and differs significantly from the approximation obtained by summing two single-$\beta$ decay Sirlin functions. In addition, we calculate the nuclear-structure-dependent component of the radiative corrections and find that they can still be neglected at current experimental sensitivities. On the other hand, the double-weak Sirlin function induces distortions of the electron energies and angular spectra that are comparable in size to the leading nuclear-structure correction parametrized by the ratio of nuclear matrix elements, ${\xi }_{31}$. Our results indicate that extractions of nuclear-structure information and tests of the standard model from high-precision $2\nu \beta \beta$ measurements must include double-weak radiative corrections, implying that recent extractions of ${\xi }_{31}$ should be revisited.