Title:  Systematic Investigation of Operators in Nuclear Systems

Speaker:  Micah Schuster, Ph.D Candidate, Computational Science Research Center, San Diego State University, Claremont Graduate University

Date:  Tuesday, November 5, 2013 @ 10 am

Place:  Education and Business Administration Building (EBA) 110

 

Abstract:

Performing quantitative calculations of nuclear observables is a guiding principle of nuclear theory. In general, we are concerned with computing physical quantities that can be, at least in principle, experimentally measured. The spectra of nuclear systems is the most common, and easiest, observable to calculate.  However, computing other observables such as the root mean square (RMS) radius, strengths of various transitions, reaction cross sections, etc. is also of great interest. This proposal outlines two different, but closely related, projects that investigate various nuclear observables in two different frameworks: (1) Within an ab initio no-core shell model to investigate external operators in light nuclei and (2) using phenomenological interactions to investigate the systematics of transitions for excited states in larger nuclei.  To achieve these goals I will develop tools to be used in combination with currently available many-body solvers. These solvers perform two major tasks: They compute the nucleon-nucleon or three-nucleon interaction and/or read in a previously computed interaction and they compute spectra and wavefunctions for the chosen nuclear system. I will create new codes and modify the existing solvers to calculate and handle the chosen operators. In addition, when calculating observables for light nuclei, I must soften the chosen interactions.

 

Committee Members:

Calvin Johnson (Department of Physics, SDSU)–Chair

Fridolin Weber (Department of Physics, SDSU)

Peter Blomgren (Department of Mathematics & Statistics, SDSU)

Ali Nadim (Department of Mathematics, CGU)

Allon Percus (Department of Mathematics, CGU)