The IRL NPA will address questions at the forefront of nuclear research along the following four scientific goals:
- nuclear structure and reactions from stability to rare isotopes,
- nuclear astrophysics from nuclear reactions in the cosmos to extreme-matter equation of state,
- nuclear theory for finite systems and uniform matter,
- instrumental developments of common interest at GANIL and FRIB.
Nuclear physics is the science dedicated to the understanding of atomic nuclei, their properties and the interaction between their constituents, as well as the description of nuclear matter under extreme conditions existing in compact stars and produced in heavy-ion collisions. Nuclei are laboratories for fundamental symmetries and interactions. In recent developments, nuclear science has started to connect the nuclear interaction to the underlying QCD theory describing the strong force. Despite the enormous progress done along this line in the last decades, such an objective is not yet fully achieved and represents a fundamental challenge today.
Nuclear physics plays also an important role in astrophysics, namely for the understanding of the origin of the elements, the chemical evolution of galaxies, and the study of the QCD phase diagram along dense and large-isospin-asymmetry regimes existing in compact stars. Gravitational waves and their electromagnetic counterparts associated to the collision of neutron stars offer new exciting opportunities to constrain the properties of nuclear matter under extreme conditions.
Progress in nuclear science over the past few decades has been made possible by advances on three main fronts: accelerator science to produce radioactive beams, nuclear theory to guide and accompany the experimental activities, and nuclear instrumentation aiming at developing high-efficiency and high-resolution detectors. In this context, worldwide efforts have been invested to produce exotic nuclei, which is concretely reflected in the construction of dedicated facilities, such as FRIB in the US, SPIRAL2 in France, CERN-ISOLDE in Switzerland, RIBF at RIKEN in Japan, and FAIR in Germany. The associated state-of-the art instrumental developments are also realized for these facilities.
Theoretical analyses and modelling of exotic nuclei and matter under extreme conditions require the formulation of sophisticated few- and many-body models, their numerical implementation, as well as the formulation of the microscopic nuclear interaction to be used in ab-initio models. Due to the complexity of state-of-the-art models and of the increasing numerical effort which is associated, the use of artificial intelligence becomes mandatory. New promising directions for future calculations are also explored though the development of algorithms to be used in quantum computers.