ECT* Trento, Italy, October 25- 30, 2010
The workshop will cover the following topics:
Nuclear physics emerges from QCD as the dynamics is fine-tuned to produce a large two-nucleon scattering length. This fine-tuning is most apparent in the existence of weakly bound nuclei as they are coupled to an environment of scattering states. Studies of decays and reactions involving weakly bound nuclei elucidate fundamental questions in nuclear science, astrophysics, and physics of the Standard Model. There is thus a need to develop new theoretical techniques and computational tools that will enable us to investigate nuclear decays and reactions with exotic nuclei.
Phenomenological reaction theory and experimental analyses for high-energy reactions at existing and proposed radioactive-beam facilities have been highly developed so far but the link to the underlying inter-nucleon interaction has proven difficult. Also the connection between nuclear forces and QCD is not easy. Light exotic nuclei offer a unique opportunity to test our growing understanding of the QCD basis of nuclear physics and of the manybody methods needed to pursue this synthesis. These nuclei have small binding energies compared to the typical QCD scale ~ 1 GeV, and are thus in a regime where low-energy effective theories of QCD can be, and have been, constructed. At the same time, these systems are amenable to exact calculations where one can study the emergence of effective interactions among coherent clusters of nucleons.
We are particularly interested in the key steps in strengthening the connections
QCD < − − − > effective interactions < − − − > light nuclei from ab-initio methods
The first link can be made through effective field theory, while the second includes no-core and continuum shell models, and advanced continuum-coupled channels methods. We hope to have at the meeting a fruitful comparison of nuclear decays and reactions based on the most accurate knowledge of the nuclear interaction and the most reliable theoretical and experimental approaches for light nuclei on the driplines (A < ~ 12). We will emphasize the interplay between effective theories and ab-initio techniques, and how they fare in comparison with data.