This website provides up-to-date information on the seminars of the Hadronic, Nuclear and Atomic Physics group at the University of Barcelona. Seminars typically take place on Wednesdays at noon (12pm) at the Pere Pascual seminar room (V507) and are broadcast online. Please contact us (arnau.rios@fqa.ub.edu) if you need login details.
Semester 1 (2025/26 year)
2 December, Piotr Sierant (BSC) - Fermionic Magic Resources of Quantum Many-Body Systems
10 December, Azusa Inohue (University of Oslo) - Experimental study of the 7Be destruction reaction relevant to Big Bang nucleosynthesis and future prospects
14 January, Thomas Celora (ICE-CSIC) - TBA
This website provides up-to-date information on the seminars of the Hadronic, Nuclear and Atomic Physics group at the University of Barcelona. Seminars typically take place on Wednesdays at noon (12pm) at the Pere Pascual seminar room (V507) and are broadcast online. Please contact Sergi González-Solís (<sergig@icc.ub.edu>) if you need login details.
Understanding the computational complexity of quantum states is a central challenge in quantum many-body physics. In qubit systems, fermionic Gaussian states can be efficiently simulated on classical computers and thus provide a natural baseline for assessing quantum complexity. In this talk, based on [arXiv:2506.00116], I will briefly introduce the idea of magic state resource theories and then focus on a framework for quantifying fermionic magic resources, also known as fermionic non-Gaussianity. I will describe the algebraic structure of the fermionic commutant and introduce fermionic antiflatness (FAF)—an efficiently computable and experimentally accessible measure of non-Gaussianity with a clear physical interpretation in terms of Majorana fermion correlation functions. I will argue that FAF detects phase transitions, reveals universal features of critical points, and identifies special solvable points in many-body systems. Extending to out-of-equilibrium settings, I will show that fermionic magic resources proliferate in highly excited eigenstates, and I will describe the growth and saturation of FAF under ergodic dynamics, emphasizing how conservation laws and locality constrain the increase of non-Gaussianity during unitary evolution. The main goal of this talk is to present fermionic non-Gaussianity—alongside entanglement and non-stabilizerness—as a resource relevant not only for foundational studies but also for experimental platforms aiming at quantum advantage.
The Cosmological Lithium Problem (CLP) is a well-known issue in astrophysics. It refers to an overestimation of the primordial 7Li abundance in the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) model predictions relative to astrophysical observations. Our research focuses on experimental nuclear physics to address the CLP. In particular, we aim to constrain the reaction rate of the 7Be(d, p)8Be reaction by measuring its cross section. The majority of 7Li nuclei were produced by the electron capture decay (T1/2= 53.22 days = 4.6 × 106 seconds) of 7Be. 7Be nuclei were produced in several hundred seconds during the BBN, leading to a timescale difference of more than 104 between the production time of 7Li and 7Be. This significant timescale difference implies that if more 7Be nuclei were destroyed during the BBN, it could result in a lower abundance of 7Li, potentially resolving the discrepancy.
Our study focuses on the 7Be(d, p)8Be reaction based on a theoretical suggestion that this reaction played a significant role in the destruction of 7Be nuclei during the BBN [1]. The measurement of the absolute cross section in the Big Bang energy region (Ec.m.=0.1−0.4 MeV) was crucial for understanding the nuclear reactions in the primordial universe. We produced a radioactive 7Be target and measured the 7Be(d, p)8Be reaction cross section at the tandem facility of Kobe University in Japan. A distinctive feature of this experiment was the production of an unstable nucleus 7Be as a target. The thick-target analysis method was applied to determine the cross sections. The cross section at the lowest energy of Ec.m.=0.12 MeV was measured with the highest sensitivity compared to the available data [2, 3, 4]. We confirmed that the measured 7Be(d, p)8Be cross sections have a limited impact on resolving the CLP.
This talk will outline the key details and discuss future perspectives, including a new project aimed at addressing the CLP.
References
[1] S. Q. Hou et al., Phys. Rev. C 91, 055802 (2015).
[2] R. Kavanagh, Nucl. Phys. 18, 492-501 (1960).
[3] C. Angulo et al., ApJ 630, L105 (2005).
[4] N. Rijal et al., PRL 122, 182701 (2019).
TBC