Hadronic and Nuclear Theory Group

A way to understand nature through interactions

Our research group

The Hadronic and Nuclear Theory group (NUCTH) studies the nature of interactions among hadrons in the vacuum and in the nuclear medium, nuclear structure, and the scattering of leptons off nuclei. At present, its international team comprises one Emeritus professor, four staff members, three senior researchers, three postdocs and seven PhD students. The NUCTH group has extensive experience in the field of hadronic and nuclear physics, having supervised more than 40 doctoral theses. It maintains a broad network of collaborations spanning China, Japan, Europe, and the United States. Some of its members have served or currently serve in scientific advisory committees of laboratories and experiments at the international level.

SPONSORS

Our research group is currently funded by the Generalitat Valenciana within the PROMETEU program with Ref. CIPROM/2023/59, and the ESGENT program with Ref. ESGENT/018/2024. We also receive support from the Spaninsh Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, from the Knowledge Generation Projects, with ref. PID2023-147458NB-C21.

PUBLICATIONS

You can find a list of research papers from our group in the web of INSPIRES-HEP

THESES

You can find the PhD Theses directed in our group HERE.

What we do

The research carried out by the NUCTH group aims to understand the fundamental properties of matter through the study of reactions and decays involving strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. These studies are based on Effective Field Theories (EFT) constructed from the symmetries of the strong interaction, and make use of both perturbative and non-perturbative techniques, quantum many-body theory and machine-learning tools. The results obtained describe experimental data as well as simulations from lattice Quantum Chromodynamics. The group’s most significant achievements include the successful description of exotic hadronic states recently observed at facilities such as LHCb, BELLE, and BESIII; a comprehensive characterization of baryon properties based on chiral perturbation theory; and major advances in the modeling of neutrino–matter interactions.

Hadron dynamics and phenomenology

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) allows for the existence of hadrons beyond the conventional quark model. Interactions among two or more hadrons can give rise to structures such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks, leading to exotic hadronic states whose properties can be explored using non-perturbative theoretical techniques.

Quark-mass dependence of hadronic properties

The study of the quark-mass dependence of the properties of mesons and baryons, including exotic states, provides theoretical insights that are not readily accessible from experimental data alone. This is achieved through the use of Effective Field Theory techniques in the analysis of lattice QCD results.

Hadrons in hot and dense matter and femtoscopy

The presence of a strongly interacting medium at finite density and temperature affects the properties of hadronic states formed in, and propagating through, such a medium. Experimental information on these modifications provides insight into the QCD phase diagram. Furthermore, the high-multiplicity yields observed in high-energy proton and ion collisions at experiments such as ALICE at the LHC reveal valuable information about hadronic interactions.

New physics in hadron semileptonic decays and scattering processes

Searches for new physics in semileptonic decays of B hadrons, in other flavor sectors, and in neutrino scattering processes probe violations of lepton flavor universality (LFU) beyond the Standard Model, as well as non-standard neutrino interactions. These studies aim to test fundamental symmetries and to investigate possible beyond-the-Standard-Model (BSM) couplings across different quark and lepton flavor sectors with high precision.

Neutrino-nucleus interactions

The theoretical understanding of neutrino interactions with nucleons and nuclei is crucial to meet the precision goals of current and future neutrino experiments in their quest to discover CP violation in the lepton sector and establish the ordering of neutrino masses. In parallel, neutrino interactions provide access to aspects of matter’s response that can be challenging to address with other probes.

Ab-initio methods for nuclear structure

Key challenges in theoretical nuclear physics are addressed through the development of quantum Monte Carlo methods to model the properties of atomic nuclei and neutron-star matter starting from the interactions among protons and neutrons. This work contributes to tests of fundamental symmetries of the Standard Model and to gravitational-wave astronomy through accurate modeling of neutron-star matter.

Get in touch

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