The atomic nucleus is a primal example of quantum many-body system, where the constituents protons and neutrons interact through a combination of complex forces. At the NT@UAM group we employ the interacting shell model, self-consistent mean-field methods and their beyond mean-field extensions to study binding energies, low-lying spectra, radioactive decays and fission properties of stable and exotic nuclei.Â
Nuclear astrophysics aims at describing the cosmic origin of the chemical elements observed in the Universe, as well as the nuclear processes occurring within and powering astrophysical objects. At the NT@UAM group we study the production of heavy elements during the so-called rapid neutron capture process (r process). This nucleosynthesis process requires the modelling of thousands of exotic nuclei, most of which cannot be produced and/or measured in current experimental facilities.
Quantum information tools like the entanglement entropy or quantum discord are used to characterize the emergence of correlations in the nuclear many body problem. By using simplified models of the atomic nucleus it has been proven that those quantities correlate well with the evolution of spontaneous symmetry breaking as a function of relevant nuclear order parameters.