Electromagnetic structure of light nuclei

by Dr Saori Pastore (Department of Physics at Washington University in St Louis)

Thursday 11 Dec 2025, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

C. Villi meeting room

Electromagnetic interactions with nuclei have been instrumental in understanding nuclear structure and dynamics. Nuclei are complex many-body systems of interacting protons and neutrons. Understanding their behavior requires accounting for many-nucleon dynamics---correlations among nucleons and interactions of external electroweak probes with clusters of correlated nucleons. Microscopic approaches to nuclear theory, such as quantum Monte Carlo methods, aim to capture this complexity and provide accurate and predictive descriptions of nuclear properties rooted in the fundamental interactions.

In this talk, I will present recent quantum Monte Carlo studies of nuclear electromagnetic observables, from low-energy decay to electron scattering. I will highlight the importance of many-nucleon dynamics in accurately explaining the experimental data and discuss how these studies inform ongoing experimental efforts in nuclear physics, precision tests of the Standard Model and neutrino physics.