The microscopic properties of the strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density is a topic of great current interest. Despite 18 orders of magnitude difference in system size and time, the conditions present in heavy-ion collisions share great overlap with the conditions of the strong-interaction matter in neutron-star mergers. The possibility to form and...
The Flavour puzzle is one the most intruiging mysteries in particle physics.
Why does nature provide us with three generations of similar fundamental fermions according to the Standard Model scheme?
In the talk we will examine selected results of the LHCb experiment, which tries to zoom in on this puzzle.
Light-nuclei production yields in heavy-ion collisions are well described in the frameworkof Statistical Hadronization Models (SHM) but a thorough understanding of the underlying dynamics is still missing. In a complementary approach, synthesis of light nuclei can be modeled in terms of final state coalescence of nucleons. While yielding an equally good description in heavy-ion collisions,...
Thermonuclear reactions that power the stars take place at different energies according to their respective stellar environments. Such energies are well below the Coulomb barrier and the respective cross-sections are extremely small, often below experimental reach. Modelling energy production in stars requires experimental data on cross-sections for low energies; these data are sparse. As a...
The creation of loosely bound light (anti-)(hyper-)nuclei in heavy ion collisions near the phase transition temperature (Tch≈155 MeV) has been a puzzling observation. We solve this puzzle by showing that the light cluster abundancies in heavy ion reactions stay approximately constant from chemical freeze-out to kinetic freeze-out. To this aim we develop an extensive network of coupled reaction...
A hydrodynamic approach to the transport of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is presented. We exploit the conservation of the number of heavy quark-antiquark pairs within the evolution of the plasma to construct causal second-order hydrodynamic equations of motion. The hydrodynamic transport coefficients associated to the heavy-quark diffusion current are then compared with the...
Quarkonium suppression has long been regarded as a potential probe of
deconfinement in nucleus-nucleus collisions. Recently, the production of 𝐽/𝜓 via regeneration within the QGP or at the phase boundary has been identified as an important ingredient for the interpretation of quarkonium production results from lead-lead collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Moreover, the study of the...
The muon anomalous magnetic moment, 𝑎𝜇=(𝑔−2)/2, provides one of the most precise tests of the Standard Model allowing to discover signs of the presence of new particles and forces in the subatomic quantum fluctuations surrounding the muon.
A previous experiment performed two decades ago at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has shown an intriguing discrepancy between the theoretical...
I discuss femtoscopic studies of hadron-hadron interactions mainly from a theoretical point of view. Femtoscopy denotes studies using two-(or more- )particle momentum correlation functions, which are given by the convolution of the source function and the relative
wave function squared. Thus when the source function is known, one can obtain information on the wave function including the...
The Electron−Ion Collider is a major new facility scheduled to be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY, by the US Department of Energy. Polarized electrons will collide with polarized protons, light ions, and heavy nuclei at luminosities far beyond what is presently available, with the goal of answering fundamental questions central to nuclear physics today. Canadian...
Antinuclei in cosmic rays are considered a unique probe for signals from exotic physics, such as WIMP Dark Matter annihilations. Indeed, these channels are characterised by a very low astrophysical background, which comes from antinuclei produced by high energy cosmic ray interaction with ordinary matter.
In order to make quantitative predictions for antinuclei fluxes near earth, both the...
In this contribution we investigate the nuclear dynamics and the nuclear equation of state (NEOS) by a detailed study of heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies. Indeed, we explore the isospin transport phenomena occurring during the collision between the projectile and target having different isospin contents. In particular, two observables are investigated the isospin diffusion and...
The antiProton Unstable Matter Annihilation (PUMA) experiment at CERN aims at using antiprotons to probe the nucleonic composition of the nuclear-density tail in stable and exotic nuclei. Antiprotons annihilate with nucleons: the summed electric charge of the annihilation products will reveal the neutron-to-proton content of the nucleus' surface. This allows to investigate quantum phenomena...
Halo nuclei are exotic nuclear structures found far from stability near the dripline. In standard reaction models, halo nuclei are described as simple two or three-body systems: an inert core with one or two weakly bound neutrons.
However, some breakup data suggest that the structure of the core, and in particular its excitation to its excited states, can play a role in the dynamics of the...
Relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions offer a unique possibility for studying nuclear matter under the influence of high temperature and pressure. During the collision, a system of interacting nucleons, resonances, and mesons, called a hadronic fireball, is created.
The Dielectron Spectrometer HADES operated at the SIS18 synchrotron of FAIR/GSI, Darmstadt provided new intriguing results on...
Coalescence is one of the main models used to describe the formation of light (anti)nuclei. It is based on the hypothesis that two nucleons close in phase space can coalesce and form a nucleus. Coalescence has been successfully tested in hadron collisions at colliders, from small (pp collisions) to large systems (Au-Au collisions). However, in Monte Carlo simulations (anti)nuclear production...
As reaction plane direction in heavy-ion collisions can be determined only coarsely, any attempt to measure 3D differential distributions, including over azimuthal angle, will yield blurred results. Deblurring procedures, analogous to those in optics, are proposed to correct for the coarse reaction-plane procedures and, simultaneously, any instrumental inefficiencies, to arrive at 3D...
The talk will cover the most recent results from the Belle II experiment
Today’s most precise timekeeping is based on optical atomic clocks. However, those could potentially be outperformed by a nuclear clock, based on a nuclear transition in-stead of an atomic shell transition. Such a nuclear clock promises intriguing applica-tions in applied as well as fundamental physics, ranging from geodesy and seismolo-gy to the investigation of possible time variations of...
In nuclear medicine, radioisotopes are injected into a patient to perform functional imaging or targeted radionuclide therapy. However, only a handful of radioisotopes are used in this field, mostly limited by a supply-and-demand closed loop that does not leave room for innovation. At radioactive ion beam facilities, however, we can provide a wide catalogue of radioisotopes to support medical...
Jet cross sections at high-energy colliders exhibit intricate patterns of logarithmically enhanced higher-order corrections. In particular, so-called non-global logarithms emerge from soft radiation emitted off energetic partons inside jets. While this is a single-logarithmic effect at lepton colliders, at hadron colliders phase factors in the amplitudes lead to double-logarithmic corrections...
The LUNA collaboration has recently completed the measurement of the D(p,γ)3He cross section at Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) energies with unprecedented precision. The study of this deuterium-burning process provides a precise determination of the universal baryon density Ωb, in excellent agreement with the value derived from CMB. The new data also provide a stringent constrain the possible...
Bottomonium ($b\overline{b}$) spectroscopy offers excellent opportunities for insights on the behavior of QCD in the non-perturbative regime. In order to guide theorists through the difficult task of modeling non-perturbative QCD phenomena, the experimental measurement of masses, widths, and transition rates of $b\overline{b}$ states is crucial. Recent analyses of Belle and Belle II data...
During the LHC Long Shutdown 3 (LS3) foreseen in 2026-2028, the ALICE collaboration is planning to replace the innermost three layers of the presently installed Inner Tracking System with a novel vertex detector, called ITS3. This further upgrade will improve the efficiency and tracking capabilities of the ALICE detector, especially at low transverse momentum, opening extraordinary...
The strongly interacting matter created in high-energy heavy-ion collisions contains a multitude of conserved quantum charges, like the baryon number, strangeness, and electric charge. These conserved charges lead to coupled charge currents, e.g. a baryon diffusion current, strangeness current and electric charge current. In this talk, we briefly present a novel derivation of second-order...
Water distribution systems can experience high levels of leakage, originating from different sources, such as deterioration due to aging of pipes and fittings, material defects, and corrosion [1]. In addition to causing financial losses and supply problems, leakages in treated water distribution also represent a risk for public health. Nowadays, several techniques for leak detection have been...
Inferences of nuclear symmetry energy parameters from recent parity-violating neutron skin measurements of the neutron-rich nuclei Ca-48 and Pb-208 appear to be in tension not only with each other but also with values obtained from fitting either nuclear masses or neutron matter theory. By themselves, PREX I+II measurements of Pb-208 and CREX measurement of Ca-48 suggest $L\simeq110\pm36$ MeV...
Given their large mass, charm quarks are recognised as powerful probes of the colour-deconfined state of the matter called quark–gluon plasma (QGP) created in high-energy heavy–ion collisions. They are mainly pro- duced in high-momentum transfer processes in shorter timescales compared to the QGP formation time, and they subsequently experience the full sys- tem evolution interacting with the...
We summarize recent results on exotic mesons determined in the framework of functional methods (Dyson-Schwinger and Bethe-Salpeter equations) in QCD.
We cover results on glueballs and four-quark states as well as their mixing
with conventional mesons in the light quark sector of QCD. In the charmoninum region we shed light on the internal structure of heavy-light four-quark states with...
The Surface Resistive Plate Counter (sRPC) is a novel RPC based on surface resistivity electrodes, a completely different concept with respect to traditional RPCs that use electrodes characterized by volume resistivity.
The electrodes of the sRPC exploit the well-established industrial Diamond-Like-Carbon (DLC) sputtering technology on thin (50µm) polyimide foils, already introduced in the...
Following the development, studies and construction of the resistive Micromegas detectors for the ATLAS experiment at CERN, in recent years an R&D project has been conducted to consolidate resistive Micromegas technology for operations well beyond the current ones in HEP experiments, with the aim of a stable, reliable, and high gain operation up to particle rates above 1 MHz/cm2, on large...
Since a first prototype in 2009 the $\mu$-Resistive WELL ($\mu$-RWELL) technology has been object of an interesting evolution that required huge efforts to achieve the final goal: a detector matching the time and space resolution of all the other MPGDs, simple to assembly and at the same time exhibiting a good robustness against discharges. This goal has been achieved thanks to the...
QCD-motivated models for hadrons predict a wide variety of multi-quark states beyond ordinary mesons and baryons, known as exotic states.
The first observation of a heavy exotic state by Belle in 2003 has triggered a huge experimental effort, and the last 20 years have marked a turning point in the field.
To date, states composed of four and five valence quark have been observed and their...
In particle therapy (PT) nuclear interactions of the beam with the patient’s body causes fragmentation of both the projectile and target nuclei. In treatments with protons, target fragmentation generates short range secondary particles, that may deposit a non-negligible dose in the entry channel. On the other hand, in treatments with ions, such as C or O, the main concern is long range...
Measuring the hadronic contributions to the muon g-2
Latest results from the ATLAS experiment
Fast local thermalization of gluons and quarks characterizes the initial stages of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. For a theoretical description, effective weakly-coupled kinetic theories that rely on the quantum Boltzmann equation have been proposed and solved numerically. In the present work, I aim to account for the time evolution during the rapid equilibration of partons in a simplified...
The unitarity isobar model PionMAID is part of the Mainz MAID project with online
programs performing real-time calculations of observables, amplitudes
and partial waves (multipoles).
The model has been developed to analyze new high
precision data from A2 at MAMI, CBELSA/TAPS, GRAAL, and CLAS Collaborations
for pion photoproduction on protons and neutrons.
The background is described in...
In the journey to explore the strong interaction among hadrons, ALICE has for the first time flared out its femtoscopic studies to nuclei. The large data sample of high-multiplicity pp collisions
√s = 13 TeV allows the measurement of the proton-deuteron (p-d) momentum correlations.
The femtoscopic study of such systems opens the door to investigate the interaction in three-body systems as...
The hyperon puzzle, the observation that the two-solar-mass neutron stars existence is hardly explained by all models predicting the appearance of hyperons in the neutron star core is currently one of the unsolved key issues in the physics of compact stars. An experimental study of the reaction (e, e’K) on 208Pb 40 has been proposed by the Jefferson lab hypernuclear collaboration, and...
Gaseous photodetectors, especially those working in the UV range, have become well established. Due to the sensitivity of the photocathode materials, reaching the visible light range is still a great challenge. Using THGEMs for electron amplification, one can in theory scale the detectors indefinitely. This could open new opportunities for applications such as indirect neutrino detection in...
Two striking anomalies have been observed recently in the emission of electron-positron pairs in 7Li(p, e+e-)8Be and 3H(p, e+e-)4He reactions [1-2]. These anomalies have been interpreted as the signature of a new particle, a boson with a mass of 17 MeV (hereafter X17 boson), not foreseen in the particle physics standard model. It has been speculated that the X17 boson could be a mediator of a...
The search for Triaxial Superdeformed (TSD) bands in the N~90 isotones has been a subject of interest for the past two-three decades [1-7]. The focus on these studies has been mainly confined to ultra-high spin states. In these studies, high spin structures with enhanced deformation have been reported and associated with the phenomenon of Triaxial Superdeformation.
The phenomenon of TSD...
