Nuclear matter in the FRIB era

Prof. Christian Drischler
Ohio University

On May 2, 2022, Michigan State University held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) to mark the beginning of a new era in nuclear physics. FRIB enables experimental studies in unexplored regions of the nuclear chart, especially with heavy, neutron-rich nuclei. The next decade is expected to witness a strong interplay between nuclear experiment, multi-messenger astronomy, and nuclear theory, which has a great potential for improving our microscopic understanding of strongly interacting matter and discovery.

In this talk, I will discuss recent developments in infinite nuclear matter calculations based on chiral effective field theory with quantified uncertainties and their implications for the neutron star structure. I will also discuss how systematic uncertainties in density functional constraints for the empirical saturation point can be estimated using Bayesian machine learning to benchmark chiral interactions. Finally, I will emphasize synergies with the approved FRIB experiment led by Notre Dame to constrain the asymmetry term in the nuclear incompressibility.

Hosted by Prof. Stroberg