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Abstract:
Nuclear energy-density functionals provide a versatile framework for describing nuclear systems, from finite nuclei to compact stars. However, conventional mean-field functionals face important limitations when applied outside the vicinity of nuclear saturation density. In dilute matter, many-body correlations lead to the formation of light clusters whose properties are modified by the surrounding medium, alongside heavier fragments emerging from mean-field instabilities. At the same time, a reliable description of the neutron-rich matter encountered in astrophysical environments requires consistency with microscopic ab initio calculations of neutron matter.
In this seminar, I will discuss recent developments aimed at extending nuclear density-functional approaches along these complementary directions. First, I will focus on the inclusion of light clusters as explicit degrees of freedom, addressing their in-medium dissolution through Pauli blocking and the Mott effect, as well as their impact on mechanical (spinodal) instabilities and fragmentation processes in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions. I will then discuss the role of light clusters also in warm stellar matter, focusing on their interplay with strong magnetic fields and providing a natural bridge between the physics of dilute nuclear systems and the thermodynamic conditions encountered in proto-neutron stars and neutron-star merger remnants.
Finally, within a flexible phenomenological description of the nuclear equation of state (EOS) based on a unified meta-modeling framework, I will discuss how microscopic constraints from low-density neutron-matter calculations affect selected properties of neutron-star crusts, as assessed through Bayesian inference.
These developments contribute to the construction of versatile nuclear density-functional approaches capable of providing a general-purpose EOS constrained by both terrestrial nuclear experiments and astrophysical observations.
Biography:
Stefano Burrello is a permanent researcher at the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Catania, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Catania in 2017. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at IJCLab in Orsay, France, and at the Institute for Nuclear Physics of Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, where he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. In 2022, he joined INFN as a permanent researcher. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 scientific publications in international journals.
His research aims at developing unified and microscopically grounded descriptions of nuclear systems across terrestrial and astrophysical scales. A central theme of his work is the nuclear equation of state and the way in which nuclear interactions and many-body correlations shape matter under different conditions of density, temperature, and isospin asymmetry. By combining nuclear energy-density functionals with transport and many-body approaches, he investigates phenomena ranging from collective dynamics and cluster formation in heavy-ion collisions to the properties of neutron-rich matter and compact stars.
Host: Prof. Liewen Chen
Alternative online link: https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/YpcODCDwYbiH
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