1159 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 report synthesizes the outcomes of the 2025 EIC-France Workshop, outlining theoretical advancements and strategic priorities for the French hadron-physics community, with a specific focus on immediate opportunities in inclusive diffraction and quarkonium production alongside longer-term goals in pion structure and exclusive three-body final states.
This paper investigates the potential of the Electron-Ion Collider to detect flavorful lepton number violation via resonant heavy neutral lepton production within the SMEFT framework, demonstrating that with of integrated luminosity and improved muon detection capabilities, the EIC could achieve sensitivities comparable to current LHC constraints.
This study demonstrates that correcting for "geometric inflation" artifacts in initial-state modeling of relativistic heavy-ion collisions significantly alters the sensitivity of final-state observables to nucleon size, thereby preventing biases in the extraction of nucleon structure and quark-gluon plasma properties.
This study reveals that despite a large parameter space in hybrid hydrodynamic models, the shape of scaled transverse momentum spectra exhibits surprisingly limited flexibility and significant tension with momentum-integrated observables, particularly regarding the nucleon width parameter and bulk viscosity.
This paper introduces sign-problem-free qubit-regularized lattice gauge theories in the monomer–dimer–tensor-network basis that successfully reproduce the confined and deconfined phases and universality classes of conventional SU(N) theories, suggesting a viable nonperturbative pathway to defining continuum limits for Yang–Mills theory.
This study investigates the gravitational wave modes of quarkyonic stars within a general relativistic framework, revealing that their unique multicomponent structure produces distinct oscillation signatures and follows approximate universal relations largely independent of the equation of state.
This paper demonstrates that the nuclear spin cutoff parameter arises from symmetry-imposed correlations due to fermionic antisymmetry and angular-momentum coupling, rather than the independent-particle assumption traditionally used in Bethe's model, by deriving a new analytical expression that includes a finite-population correction.
This study analyzes the statistical properties of two-particle cumulants in pp, d-Au, and Au-Au collisions at RHIC energies, revealing that non-flow correlations consistently produce skewed distributions with increasing skewness and kurtosis in non-QGP models, whereas the HYDJET++ model yields a Gaussian distribution that diminishes to zero at larger pseudorapidity separations.
This study compares the 3FD and JAM models for central Au+Au collisions at 3–19.6 GeV, revealing that 3FD predicts stronger baryon stopping and larger macroscopic four-volumes of high baryon density due to a stiffer equation of state, with optimal energy ranges identified for creating matter exceeding three to six times normal nuclear density.
By relaxing the implicit surface-bulk coupling constraint in energy-density functional theory, this study demonstrates that new functionals can simultaneously reconcile the conflicting CREX and PREX-II neutron-skin measurements with other nuclear and astrophysical observables without requiring extreme values of the symmetry-energy slope parameter.