Université de Strasbourg

Exotic nuclei

Microscopic Description of Exotic Nuclei: New Frontiers

USIAS Fellow: Alfredo Poves

Nuclei with extreme ratios of neutrons to protons, close to the neutron or proton drip lines, are a continued source of new phenomena (neutron halos, disappearance of magic numbers, shape coexistence, hyper-allowed beta decays, etc) as well as key elements in our understanding of many nuclear astrophysical scenarios such as the supernovae explosions and the associated nucleosynthetic processes. In this project, our theoretical approach to their  structure will be the shell model with full configuration mixing in large valence spaces (SM-CI).  We aim to describe the region of the nuclear chart south of 78Ni searching for a new island of deformation around 74Cr and its possible merging with the established one surrounding 64Cr which we predicted some time ago. In addition we shall study the heaviest N=Z nuclei from 64Ge to 100Sn, where rapid changes of shape and structure take place, with the heuristic help of our Quasi+Pseudo SU3 model. Another goal of the research project is to pursue our previous studies of the nuclear structure aspects of the neutrinoless double beta decays. Once the neutrino oscillations experimentally found (Physics Nobel Prize 2015),  this extremely rare decay process, if detected,  will sign the Majorana nature of the neutrinos (that they are their own antiparticles), one of the present unknowns of the standard model of the elementary particles and interactions. The nuclear matrix elements of the process which we calculate, are  a necessary ingredient to extract from the experimental lifetime the mass and the hierarchy of the neutrinos.

France 2030