Nuclear astrophysics and electron beams

TL;DR

This paper discusses how electron beams, combined with chiral effective field theory, enhance understanding of nuclear processes relevant to astrophysics, neutron stars, supernovae, and dark matter detection.

Contribution

It highlights recent advances and future prospects of using electron beams within chiral EFT to study nuclear structure, reactions, and astrophysical phenomena.

Findings

Electron beams help constrain nuclear forces and reactions in astrophysics.

Chiral EFT provides a systematic framework for nuclear interactions.

Insights into neutron-rich matter and dark matter interactions.

Abstract

Electron beams provide important probes and constraints for nuclear astrophysics. This is especially exciting at energies within the regime of chiral effective field theory (EFT), which provides a systematic expansion for nuclear forces and electroweak operators based on quantum chromodynamics. This talk discusses some recent highlights and future directions based on chiral EFT, including nuclear structure and reactions for astrophysics, the neutron skin and constraints for the properties of neutron-rich matter in neutron stars and core-collapse supernovae, and the dark matter response of nuclei.