This is a copy of the 2007 report prepared by the DOE/NSF Nuclear Science Advisory Committee in response to the charge from DOE and NSF to "conduct a study of the opportunities and priorities for U.S. nuclear physics research and recommend a long range plan that will provide a framework for coordinated advancement of the nation's nuclear science research programs over the next decade."
Some recent progress and open questions in extracting and understanding the new physics underlying the density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy from laboratory experiments are discussed.
Nuclear weak decays provide important probes to fundamental symmetries in nature. A precise description of these processes in atomic nuclei requires comprehensive knowledge on both the strong and weak interactions in the nuclear medium and on the dynamics of quantum many-body systems. In particular, an observation of the hypothetical double beta decay without emission of neutrinos ($0νββ$) would unambiguously demonstrate the Majorana nature of neutrinos and the existence of the lepton-number-violation process. It would also provide unique information on the ordering and absolute scale of neutrino masses. The next-generation tonne-scale experiments with sensitivity up to $10^{28}$ years after a few years of running will probably provide a definite answer to these fundamental questions based on our current knowledge on the nuclear matrix element (NME), the precise determination of which is a challenge to nuclear theory. Beyond-mean-field approaches have been frequently adapted for the study of nuclear structure and decay throughout the nuclear chart for several decades. In this review, we summarize the status of beyond-mean-field calculations of the NMEs of $0νββ$ decay assuming the
This dissertation deals with theoretical descriptions of nuclear fission and synthesis of superheavy elements via fusion. The associated shape evolutions are treated using a random-walk approach where both the potential energy and the nuclear level density influence the dynamics. The work in this thesis extends the random-walk model by, in addition to the previous description of fragment mass yields, also simulating how much kinetic energy the fission-fragments obtain and the number of neutrons they emit, as well as how these two quantities are correlated. The thesis also presents studies of how different ways of fissioning, called fission modes, are present in different nuclei and how the presence of these modes depends on the energy of the system. The model is furthermore applied to the description of the shape evolution in fusion for production of superheavy elements.
Several methodologies using different levels of approximations have been developed for propagating nuclear data uncertainties in nuclear burn-up simulations. Most methods fall into the two broad classes of Monte Carlo approaches, which are exact apart from statistical uncertainties but require additional computation time, and first order perturbation theory approaches, which are efficient for not too large numbers of considered response functions but only applicable for sufficiently small nuclear data uncertainties. Some methods neglect isotopic composition uncertainties induced by the depletion steps of the simulations, others neglect neutron flux uncertainties, and the accuracy of a given approximation is often very hard to quantify. In order to get a better sense of the impact of different approximations, this work aims to compare results obtained based on different approximate methodologies with an exact method, namely the NUDUNA Monte Carlo based approach developed by AREVA GmbH. In addition, the impact of different covariance data is studied by comparing two of the presently most complete nuclear data covariance libraries (ENDF/B-VII.1 and SCALE 6.0), which reveals a high dep
The neutrinoless double-$β$ decay is a hypothetical rare nuclear decay, which can be used for determining the neutrino-mass scale. The scheme to use this decay for determining the neutrino-mass scale is one of few limited methods possible to determine that. Nuclear matrix element of this decay is an important input to this method, and this matrix element cannot be determined by experiment. I examine the validity of the transition density used for calculating the nuclear matrix element by comparing the experimental data and my calculated result of the charge-change strength functions of $^{48}$Ca and $^{48}$Ti. The nuclear wave functions are obtained by the quasiparticle random-phase approximation. A new idea is proposed on the transition operator for this strength function, and the data of those nuclei are reproduced well consistently. Reduced half-life of a few nuclei to the neutrinoless double-$β$ decay are shown.
This chapter will go through the important nuclear reactions in stellar evolution and explosions, passing through the individual stellar burning stages and also explosive burning conditions. To follow the changes in the composition of nuclear abundances requires the knowledge of the relevant nuclear reaction rates. For light nuclei (entering in early stellar burning stages) the resonance density is generally quite low and the reactions are determined by individual resonances, which are best obtained from experiments. For intermediate mass and heavy nuclei the level density is typically sufficient to apply statistical model approaches. For this reason, while we discuss all burning stages and explosive burning, focusing on the reactions of importance, we will for light nuclei refer to the chapters by M. Wiescher, deBoer & Reifarth (Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics) and P. Descouvement (Theoretical Studies of Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions), which display many examples, experimental methods utilized, and theoretical approaches how to predict nuclear reaction rates for light nuclei. For nuclei with sufficiently high level densities we discuss statistical model methods used in presen
Nuclear weak rates in stellar environments are obtained by shell-model calculations including Gamow-Teller (GT) and spin-dipole transitions, and applied to nuclear weak processes in stars. The important roles of accurate weak rates for the study of astrophysical processes are pointed out. The weak rates in $sd$-shell are used to study the evolution of ONeMg cores in stars with 8-10 M$_{\odot}$. Cooling of the core by nuclear Urca processes, and the heating by double e-captures on $^{20}$Ne are studied. Especially, the e-capture rates for a second-forbidden transition in $^{20}$Ne are evaluated with the multipole expansion method of Walecka and Behrens-B$\ddot{\mbox{u}}$hring, and the final fate of the cores, core-collapse or thermonuclear explosion, are discussed. The weak rates in $pf$-shell are applied to nucleosynthesis of iron-group elements in Type Ia supernovae. The over-production problem of neutron-rich iron isotopes compared with the solar abundances is now reduced to be within a factor of two. The weak rates for nuclear Urca pair with $A$=31 in the island of inversion are evaluated with the effective interaction obtained by the extended Kuo-Krenciglowa method. The transit
This contribution reviews the present status on the available constraints to the nuclear equation of state (EoS) around saturation density from nuclear structure calculations on ground and collective excited state properties of atomic nuclei. It concentrates on predictions based on self-consistent mean-field calculations, which can be considered as an approximate realization of an exact energy density functional (EDF). EDFs are derived from effective interactions commonly fitted to nuclear masses, charge radii and, in many cases, also to pseudo-data such as nuclear matter properties. Although in a model dependent way, EDFs constitute nowadays a unique tool to reliably and consistently access bulk ground state and collective excited state properties of atomic nuclei along the nuclear chart as well as the EoS. For comparison, some emphasis is also given to the results obtained with the so called {\it ab initio} approaches that aim at describing the nuclear EoS based on interactions fitted to few-body data only. Bridging the existent gap between these two frameworks will be essential since it may allow to improve our understanding on the diverse phenomenology observed in nuclei. Examp
Infrared and visible image fusion (IVIF) is essential for integrating thermal saliency with textural details to support downstream perception. However, most existing approaches suffer from "semantic blindness," leading to the erroneous suppression of thermal targets and the introduction of visual artifacts. To address this, we propose SAM-Guided Diffusion Fusion Network (SGDFuse), a novel Semantic-Guided Generation (SGG) framework that reframes IVIF as a semantically-steered generative task rather than simplistic pixel mapping. Our method uniquely couples high-level semantic priors from the Segment Anything Model (SAM) with the high-fidelity generative power of a conditional diffusion model. We employ a deliberate two-stage strategy to decouple multimodal alignment from iterative refinement: Stage I establishes a robust structural foundation via preliminary fusion, while Stage II utilizes dual-modality semantic masks as spatial anchors to guide the diffusion process toward a semantically coherent, high-fidelity reconstruction. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that SGDFuse not only delivers state-of-the-art image quality but also enhances downstream task performance, confirming
Recognizing facial activity is a well-understood (but non-trivial) computer vision problem. However, reliable solutions require a camera with a good view of the face, which is often unavailable in wearable settings. Furthermore, in wearable applications, where systems accompany users throughout their daily activities, a permanently running camera can be problematic for privacy (and legal) reasons. This work presents an alternative solution based on the fusion of wearable inertial sensors, planar pressure sensors, and acoustic mechanomyography (muscle sounds). The sensors were placed unobtrusively in a sports cap to monitor facial muscle activities related to facial expressions. We present our integrated wearable sensor system, describe data fusion and analysis methods, and evaluate the system in an experiment with thirteen subjects from different cultural backgrounds (eight countries) and both sexes (six women and seven men). In a one-model-per-user scheme and using a late fusion approach, the system yielded an average F1 score of 85.00% for the case where all sensing modalities are combined. With a cross-user validation and a one-model-for-all-user scheme, an F1 score of 79.00% wa
The article Nuclear Fusion \textbf{66}, 016012 (2026) by Richard Fitzpatrick is based on fundamental errors in the physics of the evolution of the poloidal magnetic flux in tokamaks. This paper was inspired by an article $\big<$arxiv.org/abs/2507.05456$\big>$ by Allen Boozer, which was posted on arXiv in various versions. The September 9, 2025 version was submitted to the Physics of Plasmas and flatly rejected until the issues raised in the Nuclear Fusion paper had been addressed. Not only did the Nuclear Fusion paper make a number of fundamental errors in science, it also misrepresented the views clearly stated in the arXiv article and even more explicitly in email exchanges that were repeatedly cited as ``private communication."
Activation cross-sections of longer-lived products of proton induced nuclear reactions on dysprosium were measured up to 36 MeV by using stacked foil irradiation technique and gamma-spectrometry. We report for the first time experimental cross-sections for the formation of the radionuclides 162mHo, 161Ho, 159Ho, 159Dy, 157Dy, 155Dy, 161Tb, 160Tb, 156Tb and 155Tb. The experimental data were compared with the results of cross-section calculations of the ALICE and EMPIRE nuclear model codes and of the TALYS nuclear reaction model code as listed in the on-line libraries TENDL 2011 and TENDL 2012.
Experimental cross-sections are presented for the first time for the 159Tb(d,xn)155,157,159Dy, 155,156,160Tb and 153Gd nuclear reactions up to 50 MeV. The experimental data are compared with theoretical predictions of the ALICE, EMPIRE and TALYS nuclear reaction codes. Integral thick-target yields are also derived for the reaction products that have practical applications.
Biologically-inspired methods such as evolutionary algorithms and neural networks are proving useful in the field of information fusion. Artificial Immune Systems (AISs) are a biologically-inspired approach which take inspiration from the biological immune system. Interestingly, recent research has show how AISs which use multi-level information sources as input data can be used to build effective algorithms for real time computer intrusion detection. This research is based on biological information fusion mechanisms used by the human immune system and as such might be of interest to the information fusion community. The aim of this paper is to present a summary of some of the biological information fusion mechanisms seen in the human immune system, and of how these mechanisms have been implemented as AISs
This paper provides a retrospective of the ALPHA (Accelerating Low-cost Plasma Heating and Assembly) fusion program of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) of the U.S. Department of Energy. ALPHA's objective was to catalyze research and development efforts to enable substantially lower-cost pathways to economical fusion power. To do this in a targeted, focused program, ALPHA focused on advancing the science and technology of pulsed, intermediate-density fusion approaches, including magneto-inertial fusion and Z-pinch variants, that have the potential to scale to commercially viable fusion power plants. The paper includes a discussion of the origins and framing of the ALPHA program, a summary of project status and outcomes, a description of associated technology-transition activities, and thoughts on a potential follow-on ARPA-E fusion program.
We present a methodical study of the thermal and nuclear properties for the hot nuclear matter using relativistic-mean field theory. We examine the effects of temperature on the binding energy, pressure, thermal index, symmetry energy, and its derivative for the symmetric nuclear matter using temperature-dependent relativistic mean-field formalism for the well-known G2$^{*}$ and recently developed IOPB-I parameter sets. The critical temperature for the liquid-gas phase transition in an asymmetric nuclear matter system has also been calculated and collated with the experimentally available data. We investigate the approach of the thermal index as a function of nucleon density in the wake of relativistic and non-relativistic formalism. The computation of neutrino emissivity through the direct Urca process for the supernovae remnants has also been performed, which manifests some exciting results about the thermal stabilization and evolution of the newly born proto-neutron star. The central temperature and the maximum mass of the proto-neutron star have also been calculated for different entropy values.
Using the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov framework with separable pairing force coupled with the latest covariant density functionals, i.e., PC-L3R, PC-X, DD-PCX, and DD-MEX, we systematically explore the ground-state properties of all isotopes of Z=8-110. These properties consist of the binding energies, one- and two-neutron separation energies ($S_\mathrm{n}$ and $S_\mathrm{2n}$), root-mean-square radius of matter, of neutron, of proton, and of charge distributions, Fermi surfaces, ground-state spins and parities. We then predict the edges of nuclear landscape and bound nuclei for the isotopic chains from oxygen (Z=8) to darmstadtium (Z=110) based on these latest covariant density functionals. The number of bound nuclei predicted by PC-L3R, PC-X, DD-PCX, and DD-MEX, are 9004, 9162, 6799, and 7112, respectively. The root-mean-square deviations of $S_\mathrm{n}$ ($S_\mathrm{2n}$) yielded from PC-L3R, PCX, DD-PCX, and DD-MEX are 0.962 (1.300) MeV, 0.920 (1.483) MeV, 0.993 (1.753) MeV, and 1.010 (1.544) MeV, respectively. The root-mean-square deviations of charge radius distributions of comparing the available experimental values with the theoretical counterparts resulted from PC-L3
In this talk I report my recent study on the shear viscosity of neutron-rich nuclear matter from a relaxation time approach. An isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction is used in the study. Effects of density, temperature, and isospin asymmetry of nuclear matter on its shear viscosity have been discussed. Similar to the symmetry energy, the symmetry shear viscosity is defined and its density and temperature dependence are studied.
MOCABA is a combination of Monte Carlo sampling and Bayesian updating algorithms for the prediction of integral functions of nuclear data, such as reactor power distributions or neutron multiplication factors. Similarly to the established Generalized Linear Least Squares (GLLS) methodology, MOCABA offers the capability to utilize integral experimental data to reduce the prior uncertainty of integral observables. The MOCABA approach, however, does not involve any series expansions and, therefore, does not suffer from the breakdown of first-order perturbation theory for large nuclear data uncertainties. This is related to the fact that, in contrast to the GLLS method, the updating mechanism within MOCABA is applied directly to the integral observables without having to "adjust" any nuclear data. A central part of MOCABA is the nuclear data Monte Carlo program NUDUNA, which performs random sampling of nuclear data evaluations according to their covariance information and converts them into libraries for transport code systems like MCNP or SCALE. What is special about MOCABA is that it can be applied to any integral function of nuclear data, and any integral measurement can be taken in