Physical Society Colloquium

The atomic nucleus as a window to new physics

Jason D. Holt

TRIUMF

What is the mass of the neutrino? Why is there an abundance of matter over antimatter in our universe? And what is dark matter? Strangely enough, answers might very well lie, yet undiscovered, in impossibly rare nuclear decays, infinitely subtle wobblings of nuclei embedded in radioactive molecules, or the faintest recoils of nuclei colliding with dark matter.

As the role of atomic nuclei in unraveling such fundamental mysteries continues to deepen, first principles quantum simulations, starting from only underlying nuclear and weak forces, are currently undergoing nothing short of a revolution. In this talk I will outline this modern “ab initio” approach to nuclear theory and spotlight several recent milestones, including statistical predictions of the limits of existence and the neutron skin of ²⁰⁸Pb to constrain neutron star properties. Parallel advances also allow first predictions crucial for searches for physics beyond the standard model: neutrinoless double beta decay, dark matter scattering, and symmetry violating moments, with quantifiable uncertainties, for most nuclei relevant for such searches.