Researchers in Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Theory Group, part of the Nuclear Science Division (NSD), have received DOE funding support for topical theory collaborations in nuclear physics. Theory Group researchers will be involved in all of the five project teams chosen to receive awards as part of this program:

• NSD senior scientist Feng Yuan is Co-spokesperson on a project entitled 3D quark-gluon structure of hadrons: mass, spin, and tomography (QGT), being hosted by PI Martha Constantinou, an associate professor of physics, at Temple University.
• NSD senior scientist Xin-Nian Wang is Co-PI of a project entitled SURGE – Saturated Glue Topical Collaboration, being led by PI Bjoern Schenke, a senior scientist in the Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).
• André Walker-Loud, a staff scientist in NSD, and Wick Haxton, an NSD senior faculty scientist and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, are Co-PIs for the project Nuclear Theory for New Physics (NTNP), being led by PI Vincenzo Cirigliano, a professor of physics at the University of Washington and a member of the Astrophysics and Cosmology Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• Raúl Briceño, an NSD faculty scientist and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, is a Co-PI on the project Coordinated Theoretical Approach for Exotic Hadron Spectroscopy (ExoHad), being led by PI Adam Szczepaniak, a professor of physics and the director of the Nuclear Theory Center at Indiana University.
• Ramona Vogt, senior scientist from LLNL, adjunct faculty at UC Davis, and an affiliate with nuclear theory group at LBNL, is Co-spokesperson of the HEFTY project (Heavy-Flavor Theory for QCD Matter), led by PI Ralf Rapp, a professor at Texas A&M University.

Each of these projects involves a collaboration among theorists to advance the understanding of nuclear matter, spanning a variety of topics from the internal structure of nucleons, to exotic states of matter, to properties of the quark gluon plasma, to neutrino-nucleus interactions. New insights from these projects will inform predictions that will eventually underpin the theoretical interpretation of data from facilities across the national laboratory network including the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), and the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).

“Advances in nuclear physics provide important new insights into the nature of our world as well as novel applications in the areas of national security, energy, health, and space exploration,” said Timothy Hallman, Associate Director for Nuclear Physics in the DOE Office of Science. “Developing rigorous theoretical frameworks to underpin such advances enables new predictions of nuclear phenomena and a foundation for understanding how knowledge gained can be used to benefit society, such as exploring more clean energy options and new applications in nuclear medicine and industry.”

Read the full details about these awards in the DOE Office of Science press release, Department of Energy Announces $11.24 Million for Research on Nuclear Theory Topical Collaborations (December 7, 2022), and all awards are presented in this list of awards (pdf).