News & Events Archive

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2023

• Colloquium: Maria Piarulli April 2023 Nuclear theorist Maria Piarulli of Washington University in St. Louis is giving the April 19, 2023, departmental colloquium The importance of many-body nuclear effects in light nuclei.

2022

• Anna McCoy named FRIB Theory Fellow January 2022 Nuclear theory group alum Anna McCoy (Ph.D. '18) has been selected by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Theory Alliance (FRIB-TA) as a 2022 FRIB Theory Fellow. She will be hosted by Washington University in St. Louis. [Notre Dame news item]

2020

• Highlight: Probing ab initio emergence of nuclear rotation October 2020 The European Physical Journal A recognized work on ab initio emergence of nuclear rotation, by Mark Caprio, Patrick Fasano, and collaborators, with an EPJA Highlight. This article was an invited contribution to the European Physical Journal A topical issue The tower of effective (field) theories and the emergence of nuclear phenomena.

• Colloquium: Joaquin Drut October 2020 Nuclear theorist Joaquin Drut of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is giving the October 7, 2020, departmental colloquium Blurry old pictures: Noise, memory, and the challenge of the quantum many-body problem.

• Colloquium: Jason Chang January 2020 Nuclear theorist Chia Cheng (Jason) Chang of RIKEN is giving the January 22, 2020, departmental colloquium Nucleon Structure from Quantum Chromodynamics.

2019

• Midwest Theory Get-Together October 2019 The Notre Dame nuclear theory group is serving as the organizing committee for the 2019 edition of the Midwest Theory Get Together at Argonne National Laboratory, October 25–26, 2019. This annual meeting brings together theorists in nuclear physics and related areas from across the Midwest, for two days of talks and interactions. The 2019 event will be coupled with an Argonne Director's Special Colloquium by 2018 Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland.

• Colloquium: Charlotte Elster September 2019 Nuclear theorist Charlotte Elster of Ohio University is giving the September 25, 2019, departmental colloquium Nuclear reactions in the laboratory and the cosmos: A few-body perspective.

• Colloquium: Saori Pastore September 2019 Nuclear theorist Saori Pastore of Washington University in St. Louis is giving the September 18, 2019, departmental colloquium Fundamental physics with electroweak probes of nuclei.

2018

• Colloquium: Dean Lee January 2018 Nuclear theorist Dean Lee of Michigan State University is giving the January 31, 2018, departmental colloquium Lattice simulations for nuclear physics.

2017

• Caprio to serve as Associate Editor for European Physical Journal A November 2017 Mark Caprio has been selected to serve as an Associate Editor, in the area of Nuclear Theory, for the European Physical Journal A: Hadrons and Nuclei. This is the European Physical Society journal for nuclear physics, which was established as the successor to several European national journals, including Zeitschrift fuer Physik A and Il Nuovo Cimento A. Caprio will serve a three-year term on the editorial board.

• REU student Julie Butler participates in Conference Experience for Undergraduates October 2017 Our Summer 2017 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) student Julie Butler, from Erskine College, participated in the Conference Experience for Undergraduates program at the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics meeting in Pittsburgh, where she presented the results of her REU project. In her REU work at Notre Dame, mentored by Mark Caprio and Patrick Fasano, she had compared the ability of ab initio nuclear structure calculations to predict experimentally observed rotational band properties in light nuclei, for calculations based on different realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions.

• Anna McCoy thesis defense August 2017 Graduate student Anna McCoy defended her thesis Ab initio multi-irrep symplectic no-core configuration interaction calculations, completed under the supervision of Mark Caprio, on August 16, 2017. Anna developed an ab initio symplectic no-core configuration interaction (SpNCCI) framework for nuclear structure calculations of light nuclei, which makes use of the approximate Sp(3,R) many-body symmetry of nuclei to obtain accelerated convergence. She demonstrated the prevalence of Sp(3,R) symmetry throughout the low-lying nuclear excitation spectrum.

• TRIUMF ab initio workshop February 2017 Mark Caprio and graduate student Anna McCoy participated in the international workshop Progress in Ab Initio Techniques in Nuclear Physics at TRIUMF in Vancouver, British Columbia. They presented initial results of Anna's thesis work on developing an ab initio framework for using symplectic symmetry in the nuclear many-body problem. This work is in collaboration with Tomas Dytrych of the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

• Colloquium: Wick Haxton January 2017 Nuclear theorist Wick Haxton of the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is giving the January 25, 2017, departmental colloquium The nuclear physics of dark matter detection.

2016

• REU student Abe Flores participates in Conference Experience for Undergraduates October 2016 Our Summer 2016 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) student Abraham Flores, from Michigan State University, participated in the Conference Experience for Undergraduates program at the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics meeting in Vancouver, where he presented the results of his REU project. In his REU work at Notre Dame, mentored by Mark Caprio and Valentino Constantinou, he had developed routines for accurate evaluation of numerical integrals needed in ab initio nuclear structure calculations.

• Valentino Constantinou thesis defense September 2016 Graduate student Chrysovalantis (Valentino) Constantinou defended his thesis Natural orbitals for the no-core configuration interaction approach, completed under the supervision of Mark Caprio, on September 1, 2016. Valentino studied the use of natural orbitals, an approach adapted from atomic and molecular electron-structure physics, in ab initio nuclear structure calculations of light nuclei. His thesis work included collaborations with the Iowa State nuclear theory group of James Vary and Pieter Maris.

• ICNT program on r-process nucleosynthesis June 2016 The International Collaborations in Nuclear Theory (ICNT) workshop "r-process nucleosynthesis: connecting FRIB with the cosmos" was held May 31-June 17, 2016 at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory/Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University. The workshop was co-organized by Chuck Horowitz (Indiana), Brian Metzger (Columbia), Gail McLaughlin (NCSU), Hendrik Schatz (MSU), and Rebecca Surman.

• Surman elected to FRIB Theory Alliance Executive Board May 2016 Rebecca Surman has been elected as a new member of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Theory Alliance Executive Board. The FRIB Theory Alliance is a coalition of scientists from universities and national laboratories who seek to foster advancements in theory related to diverse areas of FRIB science; optimize the coupling between theory and experiment; and rejuvenate the field by creating permanent theory positions across the country. Surman will serve a three-year term on the board.

• MacKenzie Warren receives Shaheen Award May 2016 Graduate student MacKenzie Warren has been selected as a recipient of the 2016 Shaheen Award. The highest honor bestowed on Notre Dame graduate students, the Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Awards were established in 1990 and are named for two long-time benefactors of the University. They recognize the superior academic achievements of a graduating student in each of the four divisions of the Graduate School: Engineering, the Humanities, Science, and the Social Sciences.

• Weichuan Li thesis defense May 2016 Graduate student Weichuan Li defended her thesis Algebraic collective model and its application to core quasiparticle coupling, completed under the supervision of Stefan Frauendorf and Mark Caprio, on May 3, 2016. Weichuan studied the nuclear structure of medium heavy nuclei, in the nuclear regions where deformed nuclei change shape from axial to triaxial. She investigated the core-quasiparticle interaction odd-mass nuclei with soft triaxial collective cores and established the role of the quasiparticle in dynamically stabilizing rigid triaxial deformation. Her thesis work includes collaborations with the Notre Dame experimental groups of Ani Aprahamian and Umesh Garg.

• Colloquium: Petr Navratil April 2016 Nuclear theorist Petr Navratil of TRIUMF is giving the April 27, 2016, departmental colloquium Ab initio calculations of nuclear reactions important for astrophysics. Navratil is Theory Group Leader at TRIUMF and Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University.

• MacKenzie Warren thesis defense April 2016 Graduate student MacKenzie Warren defended his thesis Neutrinos in core-collapse supernovae, completed under the supervision of Grant Mathews, on April 6, 2016. MacKenzie researched the effects of sterile neutrino species on core bounce and shock reheating in supernovae, reformulated the Notre Dame-Livermore nuclear equation of state, and carried out relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of black hole formation via rapid accretion onto a neutron star.

• FRIB Theory Alliance Inaugural Meeting April 2016 Rebecca Surman, Mark Caprio, and graduate students Weichuan Li and Anna McCoy participated in the two-day FRIB Theory Alliance Inaugural Meeting at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams in East Lansing, Michigan. Rebecca Surman presented the meeting's overview talk on Nucleosynthesis [PDF].

• Colloquium: Silas Beane March 2016 Nuclear theorist Silas Beane of the University of Washington is giving the March 23, 2016, departmental colloquium Nuclear physics from lattice QCD. Beane is Professor of Physics at the University of Washington. [PDF abstract]

• TRIUMF ab initio workshop February 2016 Mark Caprio and graduate student Anna McCoy participated in the international workshop Progress in Ab Initio Techniques in Nuclear Physics at TRIUMF in Vancouver, British Columbia. They both spoke on physically adapted bases for ab initio calculations. The graduate student poster jamboree talks on group theoretical methods were unexpectedly interrupted when ladder operators acted to create an excited state (photo at left).

2015

• Graduate student Anna McCoy collaborates at LBNL August 2015 Graduate student Anna McCoy is spending Fall 2015 working with our collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), supported by a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award entitled Enabling nuclear symplectic calculations at large scale. She is working with Dr. Chao Yang of the Computational Research Division at LBNL on restructuring the algorithms for ab initio symplectic no-core configuration interaction (Sp-NCCI) calculations.

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