931 papers
Nuclear theory sits at the fascinating intersection of particle physics and the forces that hold our universe together. This field explores how protons and neutrons bind inside atomic nuclei, seeking to understand the fundamental interactions that govern matter at its most dense and energetic levels. While the mathematics involved can be incredibly complex, the core questions are deeply human: how does the universe function at its smallest scales, and what happens when we push matter to its limits?
At Gist.Science, we make these cutting-edge discoveries accessible by processing every new preprint published in this category on arXiv. Our team transforms dense academic manuscripts into clear, plain-language summaries alongside detailed technical overviews, ensuring that both experts and curious readers can grasp the latest breakthroughs without getting lost in the jargon. Below are the latest papers in nuclear theory, distilled and ready for you to explore.
This paper presents a simple analytic estimate for the onset time of neutron star crust formation during the late post-convective cooling phase, deriving closed-form expressions that predict the first solid phase typically appears between 100 and 500 seconds after birth, with specific dependence on the protoneutron star's mass, radius, and composition.
This study demonstrates that the directed flow () of charm quarks in asymmetric Cu+Au collisions is significantly enhanced compared to light hadrons and serves as a sensitive probe for both the initial spatial distribution of heavy quarks and temperature-dependent medium transport coefficients.
This paper derives and demonstrates that exclusive quasi-elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering exhibits a parity-violating azimuthal asymmetry in the outgoing nucleon distribution, which is sensitive to nuclear modeling and potentially observable with current-generation detectors to improve neutrino energy reconstruction.
This paper introduces a temperature-resolved Monte Carlo approach to demonstrate that pair-instability supernova nucleosynthesis, specifically Ni production, is most sensitive to variations in the triple- and C(,)O reaction rates at approximately K, where these rates exert opposite influences on the pre-carbon-burning C/O composition.
Using the JETSCAPE event generator to simulate peripheral p-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV, this study estimates the minimum size for Quark-Gluon Plasma hydrodynamization by analyzing elliptic flow fluctuations, which indicate a breakdown of fluid behavior at a charged-particle multiplicity of approximately .
This paper demonstrates through rigorous quantum statistical analysis of free fermions that the commonly assumed local differential thermodynamic relations in relativistic spin hydrodynamics fail even at global equilibrium, revealing unavoidable corrections to the spin density-pressure relationship that cannot be resolved by entropy-gauge transformations.
Using the isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck transport model with Brueckner-Hartree-Fock cross sections, this study demonstrates that accurately describing in-medium effects in heavy-ion collisions requires accounting for the interplay between scattering amplitude, density of states, and total momentum dependence, as these factors differentially influence observables like nuclear stopping and pion yields while leaving others like the ratio relatively insensitive.
This paper proposes a novel method to detect light-quark Yukawa couplings to the Higgs boson by measuring unique azimuthal modulations in fragmentation products, termed Yukawa Fragmentation Asymmetries, which offer improved sensitivity and theoretical control compared to existing techniques.
This paper presents a first-principles calculation of the time-evolving, non-thermal emission spectra of electrons, gamma-rays, neutrinos, and neutrons from the -decay of -process nuclei, establishing these multi-messenger signals as a direct and complementary probe of heavy element formation alongside kilonova observations.
This paper combines lattice QCD, effective field theories, and multimessenger constraints to model first-order QCD phase transitions in neutron stars, predicting distinctive signatures such as twin star branches and delayed gravitational-wave frequency shifts that, while marginally consistent with current data, offer testable predictions for next-generation detectors like the Einstein Telescope.