Emergence of simple patterns in many-body systems: from macroscopic objects to the atomic nucleus

TL;DR

This paper reviews how simple, regular patterns such as shell structures and collective behaviors emerge in strongly correlated many-body systems across different scales, highlighting experimental signatures and recent challenges in nuclear physics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental signatures and recent findings related to emergent phenomena in many-body systems, especially exotic nuclei.

Findings

Identification of shell structures in exotic nuclei

Observation of collective motion patterns

New experimental challenges in nuclear physics

Abstract

Strongly correlated many-body systems often display the emergence of simple patterns and regular behaviour of their global properties. Phenomena such as clusterization, collective motion and appearance of shell structures are commonly observed across different size, time, and energy scales in our universe. Although at the microscopic level their individual parts are described by complex interactions, the collective behaviour of these systems can exhibit strikingly regular patterns. This contribution provides an overview of the experimental signatures that are commonly used to identify the emergence of shell structures and collective phenomena in distinct physical systems. Examples in macroscopic systems are presented alongside features observed in atomic nuclei. The discussion is focused on the experimental trends observed for exotic nuclei in the vicinity of nuclear closed-shells, and the new challenges that recent experiments have posed in our understanding of emergent phenomena in nuclei.