This study quantifies the impact of nuclear de-excitation on correlations in multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reactions. To bridge the gap between initial collision dynamics and final experimental observables, we introduce a hybrid $\mathrm{TDCDFT}+\mathrm{GEMINI}$ approach, integrating time-dependent covariant density functional theory with the statistical de-excitation model $\mathrm{GEMINI}++$. Applied to the ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}+{}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$ reaction, our method demonstrates that the de-excitation is essential for reconciling theoretical cross sections with experimental data. Analysis of the cross-section Shannon entropy reveals that new reaction channels open abruptly at a specific energy threshold. By employing mutual information, we show that the de-excitation process significantly degrades the initial quantum entanglement between the projectile-like and the target-like fragments, revealing a key mechanism through which fundamental quantum correlations are lost.

In this paper, we study the balance functions for pions, kaons, and protons in Pb–Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = $2.76$ TeV using the Pythia8.3 + Angantyr model. The balance function is evaluated through two-particle azimuthal angular correlations ($\mathrm{\Delta }\phi ,\mathrm{\Delta }\eta$) between particle and antiparticle. Correlations are constructed for $\pi \pi , KK$, and $pp$, and their dependence on collision centrality is investigated. The results indicate that the balance function for pions is narrower compared with kaons and protons. Notably, the pion balance functions width decreases from peripheral to central collisions, while the balance functions widths for kaons and protons remain nearly unchanged. For the Monash 2013 tune used in this study, Pythia8.3 + Angantyr describes peripheral collisions reasonably well but does not quantitatively reproduce central Pb–Pb data. This suggests that an improved description of central Pb–Pb collisions may require a dedicated heavy-ion tuning of the Angantyr framework. We further explore the influence of resonance decays and collective effects by incorporating multiparton interactions and color reconnection into the analysis. Owing to resonance effects and Bose–Einstein correlations, a dip at $\mathrm{\Delta }\eta$ = 0 and $\mathrm{\Delta }\phi$ = 0 is observed for pions and kaons.

We investigate the impact of the model estimating the masses of exotic nuclei on $r$-process nucleosynthesis, assessing the dependence of the abundance distribution on the specific properties of nuclear masses. By decomposing theoretical nuclear mass predictions into a liquid-drop parametrization and local shell effects, we show that $r$-process abundances are virtually insensitive to large variations of the masses, which originate from nuclear bulk properties of the model, such as the symmetry energy. In contrast, the mass component associated with local shell effects is the main driver of $r$-process abundance variations, despite its relatively minor contribution to the absolute value of neutron separation energies. Our work suggests that experimental and theoretical studies of masses devoted to $r$-process applications, such as the nucleosynthesis in the ejecta of neutron star mergers, should focus on the physical origin and determination of local changes in mass trends.

A modern chiral potential incorporating the three-body force is adopted to investigate bulk properties, spectra, and nuclear responses of closed-(sub)shell nuclei throughout the nuclear chart within a particle-hole renormalized random-phase approximation scheme using a Hartree-Fock single-particle basis. Our analysis shows that all instabilities induced by the quasiboson approximation underlying random-phase approximation are removed and an overall better consistency with the experiments is achieved for all observables of the investigated nuclei. The residual discrepancies point out the need of going beyond the particle-hole space.

Energy-differential cross section of the ${}^{\mathrm{nat}}\mathrm{C}(n,p)$ and ${}^{\mathrm{nat}}\mathrm{C}(n,d)$ reactions was measured at the neutron time-of-flight facility n_TOF at CERN. The measurement was performed in the first experimental area (EAR1; flight path of 182.5 m). Two position-sensitive $\mathrm{\Delta }E\text{−}E$ silicon telescopes were used. Two naturally occurring carbon isotopes, ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ and ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$, contribute to the reactions on natural carbon, with the (n,p) reaction threshold at 13.7 MeV and the (n,d) threshold at 14.9 MeV (determined by the ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ isotope for both reactions). This paper provides the details of the analysis leading to the final results published previously as a Letter. The cross-section results are reported up to 25 MeV. During the data analysis the population of the excited states in the daughter nuclei ${}^{11}\mathrm{B}$, ${}^{12}\mathrm{B}$, and ${}^{13}\mathrm{B}$ had to be considered, requiring the adoption of the branching ratios and angular distributions of the emitted particles from an external source of information. talys-2.0 calculations were used as the main source and an in-depth analysis of the model-related uncertainties was performed. The n_TOF results are largely inconsistent with the major evaluation libraries. On the other hand, an unexpected agreement is found with talys-2.0 calculations. Specifically, the obtained cross section for the (n,p) reaction is significantly higher than in the available evaluations, fully supporting the earlier finding from an integral measurement at n_TOF.

Odd-neutron and odd-proton spectroscopic strengths have been obtained for low-lying bound states in the $N,Z$ = 50–82 major shell, populated through $1n$- and $1p$-transfer reactions on the even-$A$ ${}^{112-124}\mathrm{Sn}$ isotopes. While most proton orbitals in the 50–82 shell exhibit predominantly pure single-particle character, the neutron states show significant fragmentation of strength. The unperturbed energies of the neutron and proton single-particle levels are determined and display systematic shifts across the isotopic chain. In the odd-neutron nuclei, the yrast states closely track the measured neutron single-particle energies, which are largely driven by pairing correlations in the Sn valence space. In contrast, the odd-proton energies exhibit a prominent orbital-dependence that aligns well with mean-field calculations incorporating the effect of the neutron-proton tensor force. Both the $1n$- and $1p$-transfer probabilities show a reduction with worsening $Q$-value matching.

The in-medium similarity renormalization group (IMSRG) is a popular many-body method used for computations of nuclei. It solves the many-body Schrödinger equation through a continuous unitary transformation of the many-body Hamiltonian. The IMSRG transformation is typically truncated at the normal-ordered two-body level, the IMSRG(2), but recently several approaches have been developed to capture the effects of normal-ordered three-body operators, the IMSRG(3). In particular, a factorized approximation to the IMSRG(3) proposes to capture the leading effects of three-body operators at the same computational cost as the IMSRG(2) approximation. This approach often employs an approximate scheme for solving the IMSRG equations, the so-called hunter-gatherer scheme. In this work, I study the uncertainty associated with this scheme. I find that the hunter-gatherer scheme differs by up to $7\mathrm{MeV}$ for ground-state energies and $0.5\mathrm{MeV}$ for excitation energies from standard IMSRG(2) approaches. These differences are in some cases comparable to the expected size of IMSRG(3) corrections.

Background: Properties of giant dipole resonances, along with other nuclear resonances, provide valuable tools for refining theoretical models as they reflect collective features of nuclear matter. Among such collective phenomena is octupole deformation, whose impact on resonance features, however, is less studied.

Purpose: Investigate the effect of reflection-symmetry-breaking octupole deformation on electric and magnetic transition strengths in atomic nuclei.

Methods: Calculations were performed using linear response theory with the iterative finite amplitude method to solve quasiparticle random phase approximation–type equations. Underlying ground-state solutions were obtained within the framework of axially symmetric Skyrme–Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov (HFB) using three different Skyrme functionals.

Results: Electric and magnetic multipole responses were calculated for octupole-deformed even-even Rn, Ra, Th, U, Pu, and Cm isotopes. Calculations were performed on top of two distinct deformed ground-state solutions: one constrained to conserve parity, and the other allowing parity breaking. Sum rules were calculated from $M1$ transition strengths and compared with the expected correlations to certain ground-state properties.

Conclusions: Based on our results, the octupole deformation has only a modest effect on the transition strengths in the resonances. In turn, $M1$ transition strengths have a greater effect at lower energies ($0–8\text{MeV}$), which encourages further investigation. Isoscalar $E3$ transition strength was confirmed to have a significant contribution from the rotational Nambu–Goldstone mode in the parity-breaking HFB solution, and, thus, removing it was found necessary.

The earliest phase of an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision can be described as a highly populated system of gluons called glasma. The system's dynamics is governed by the classical Yang-Mills equation. Solutions can be found at early times using a proper time expansion. Since the expansion parameter is the proper time, this method is necessarily limited to the study of early time dynamics. In addition compute time and memory limitations restrict practical calculations to no more than eighth order in the expansion. The result is that the method produces reliable results only for very early times. In this paper we explore three different methods to increase the maximum time that can be reached. We use Padé approximants to extrapolate analytic results calculated previously at eighth order in the proper time expansion M. E. Carrington et al. [Phys. Rev. C 108, 054903 (2023)]. We also use an analytic approximation based on the assumption that there are two widely separated ultraviolet scales M. Li et al. [Phys. Rev. C 94, 024908 (2016)] to extend the proper time expansion to 20th order. Lastly, we develop a machine learning method to learn an expression for the transverse-longitudinal pressure anisotropy using symbolic regression. We find that, depending slightly on the quantity being calculated, the latest time for which reliable results are obtained can be extended approximately 1.5 times (from $\sim 0.05 \mathrm{fm}/c$ using previous methods to about 0.08 $\mathrm{fm}/c$).

In this work I present new extractions of the proton's conventional charge $\langle r_E\rangle$ and magnetic $\langle r_M\rangle$ root-mean-square radii using two-photon-exchange corrected electric $G_E^p\left(Q^2\right)$ and magnetic $G_M^p\left(Q^2\right)$ form factor data from I. A. Qattan and J. Arrington [Phys. Rev. C 86, 065210 (2012)] and I. A. Qattan, J. Arrington, and A. Alsaad [Phys. Rev. C 91, 065203 (2015)] covering the range of 0.0155 $<Q^2<$ 1.00 ${\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. The radii were extracted following two different approaches. In the first approach both form factors were fitted separately within a finite and extended $Q^2$ range utilizing several rational functional forms of different orders and number of fitting parameters, and the radii were extracted based on the $G_{(E,M)}^p Q^2$ slope at $Q^2=0$. In the second approach, I investigated possible coupling of both radii through the slope of the form factor ratio $R_p=G_E^p/G_M^p$ at $Q^2$ = 0 and extracted $\langle r_E\rangle$ ($\langle r_M\rangle$) using the extracted values of $\langle r_M\rangle$ ($\langle r_E\rangle$) along with their associated statistical uncertainties as obtained from the first approach. For the first approach, I obtain $\langle r_E\rangle =0.854\pm 0.{002}_{\text{(stat.)}}\pm 0.{003}_{\text{(sys.)}}$ (fm) and $\langle r_M\rangle =0.831\pm 0.{001}_{\text{(stat.)}}\pm 0.{001}_{\text{(sys.)}}$ (fm). For the second approach, I obtain $\langle r_E\rangle =0.851\pm 0.{001}_{\text{(stat.)}}\pm 0.{001}_{\text{(sys.)}}$ (fm) and $\langle r_M\rangle =0.834\pm 0.{002}_{\text{(stat.)}}\pm 0.{003}_{\text{(sys.)}}$ (fm). Both approaches yield consistent results suggesting that the proton's charge and magnetic radii are very close to each other but not exactly the same. My extracted $\langle r_E\rangle$ values are also consistent with previous extractions based on the slope of the Dirac flavor-separated $F_1^{(u,d)}\left(Q^2\right)$ form factors at $Q^2=$ 0 and the ultrahigh precise muonic hydrogen μH Lamb shift and PRad I Collaboration measurements but in strong disagreement with the Mainz A1 Collaboration results. For $\langle r_M\rangle$ my results are in very good agreement with several recent extractions based on combined dispersion analyses, but they are in stark contrast with the conflicting range of results obtained by the Mainz A1 Collaboration. I also extracted the proton's transverse charge and magnetization ${\langle b^2\rangle }_{(1,2)}^p$ and the 3D Dirac and Pauli ${\langle r^2\rangle }_{(1,2)}^p$ radii, and compared the results to previous extractions and theoretical calculations based on dispersively improved chiral effective field theory ($\mathrm{DI}\chi \mathrm{EFT}$).

In this work, we present new extraction of the proton $\langle r_p\rangle$ and neutron $\langle r_n^2\rangle$ root-mean-square charge radius using only two-photon-exchange corrected proton's $G_{(E,M)}^p\left(Q^2\right)$ form-factor data from I. A. Qattan and J. Arrington [Phys. Rev. C 86, 065210 (2012)] and I. A. Qattan, J. Arrington, and A. Alsaad [Phys. Rev. C 91, 065203 (2015)] covering the range of $0.0155<Q^2<5.250{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. Assuming isospin and charge symmetry and neglecting the strange quarks contributions, $G_{(E,M)}^p$ are first expressed in terms of the flavor-separated $G_{(E,M)}^{(u,d)}$ form factors and then fitted separately up to $Q^2=5.25{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$ using different rational functional forms of $G_{(E,M)}^{(u,d)}$. The best achieved $G_{(E,M)}^{(u,d)}$ parametrizations are used to extract $G_{(E,M)}^n$ extending the range of extraction of $G_E^n$ and the Dirac flavor-separated $F_1^{(u,d)}$ up to $Q^2=5.25{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. The charge radius are calculated using the two-dimensional transverse quark charge distributions based on the slopes of $F_1^{(u,d)}\left(Q^2\right)$ at $Q^2=0$ through model-independent relations. We also have investigated the impact of inclusion of high-$Q^2$ data points, functional forms fitted, and fitting range on the radius extraction. For the proton, we find $\langle r_p\rangle =0.8354\pm 0.{0020}_{\text{(stat.)}}\pm 0.{0060}_{\text{(sys.)}}$, which agrees with the PRad I collaboration measurements and ultrahigh precise muonic hydrogen $\mu \mathrm{H}$ Lamb shift results but disagrees with the Mainz collaboration extractions and the Particle Data Book (CODATA 2010-2014) results. For the neutron, on the other hand, our obtained value of $\langle r_n^2\rangle =-0.0998\pm 0.{0030}_{\text{(stat.)}}\pm 0.{0040}_{\text{(sys.)}}$ is $\approx 10.22\%$ below in magnitude the value reported by the recent precise measurements of the low-$Q^2 G_E^n$ in connection with the $N\to \mathrm{\Delta }$ quadrupole transitions and $\approx 15.43\%$ below the new adjusted $\langle r_n^2\rangle$ world data value.

The production of ${}^{159,160,161}\mathrm{Os}$ and ${}^{159,160,161}\mathrm{Re}$ was investigated in experiments performed at the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä. The nuclei of interest were produced using fusion-evaporation reactions induced by beams of 275–353 MeV ${}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}$ ions bombarding a ${}^{106}\mathrm{Cd}$ target. The evaporation residues were separated in flight using the recoil separator MARA and implanted into a double-sided silicon strip detector, which was used to measure their decays. Cross sections for the production of these nuclides were measured and the relative population of the $8^{+}$ isomeric states and ground states of the $N$=84 isotones ${}^{156}\mathrm{Hf}$, ${}^{158}\mathrm{W}$, and ${}^{160}\mathrm{Os}$ were deduced. New decay chains assigned to ${}^{160}\mathrm{Os}$ were identified at beam energies of 310 and 330 MeV. These findings are compared with previous studies claiming the observation of ${}^{160}\mathrm{Os}$ and ${}^{156}\mathrm{W}$. The $\alpha$ decays of ${}^{161}\mathrm{Os}$ were observed, confirming previous results for this nuclide and its $\beta$-decaying daughter, ${}^{157}\mathrm{W}$. The $\alpha$-decay branch of ${}^{159}\mathrm{Re}$ was also confirmed, but no delayed decays of this nuclide were observed that would be a signature of the $\beta$ decays of the as yet unknown nuclide ${}^{159}\mathrm{Os}$.

Impacts of octupole correlations on the low-lying $0^{+}$ states and two-neutron transfer intensities in rare-earth nuclei are investigated in terms of the interacting boson model that is based on the nuclear density functional theory. The octupole degrees of freedom are not only essential building blocks to describe properties of negative-parity states in the model, but also influence low-spin positive-parity states including excited $0^{+}$ states. The calculation produces a large number of low-energy $0^{+}$ states that contain significant amounts of octupole components, indicating important roles played by the octupole degrees freedom in this mass region. Octupole correlations are shown to make sizable contributions to the $(p,t)$ and $(t,p)$ transfer intensities and, in particular, to reproduce the discontinuous changes of these quantities near those nuclei with $N\approx 88$ or 90, which are observed experimentally as a signature of the shape phase transition.

Background: The dipole response of a nuclear system, characterized by its photon strength function (PSF), is a key ingredient of many applications of nuclear structure, ranging from nuclear reactor design and nuclear waste transmutation to astrophysical models of nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution. While the majority of those applications require knowledge of the PSF of midmass and heavy nuclei, there is now renewed interest in $E1$ strength distributions of light nuclei in the framework of the PANDORA project, which aims at an understanding of the mass distribution of ultrahigh-energy cosmic radiation (UHECR). UHECR is of extragalactic origin, and its interaction along the travel path is dominated by photoabsorption of cosmic background radiation boosted to the Giant Dipole Resonance energy region in the center-of-mass system. Thus, systematic knowledge of the photoabsorption cross sections in light nuclei and of their subsequent particle decay is required.

Purpose: The purpose of this work is to enhance the database of available theoretical evaluations of the PSFs of light nuclei that are necessary in the studies of UHECR propagation.

Methods: We employ the Configuration Interaction Shell Model (CI-SM) approach to provide predictions of $E1$ dipole response for $p$- and $sd$-shell nuclei, with mass number $A$ between 7 and 40. Theoretical predictions are compared with available data and with existing predictions from phenomenological and microscopic models. Finally, the impact of using CI-SM PSFs on the predicted propagation of a ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}$ UHECR source is studied.

Results: As the CI-SM approach captures all the nucleonic correlations in a given configuration space, the CI-SM predictions of the centroids and widths of PSFs exhibit stronger variation and fragmentation, respectively, than those from linear-response and from phenomenological models. When used in the nuclear reaction network, they lead to an outcome that is compatible with the recently developed relativistic quasiparticle finite amplitude method, which is at stronger variance with the predictions employing the $\mathrm{D}1\mathrm{M}+\mathrm{QRPA}$ (quasiparticle random-phase approximation) approach.

Conclusions: The CI-SM method is shown to be a valuable alternative to provide PSFs for the modeling of the propagation of the UHECR, so far only achieved with linear-response models and phenomenological models of nuclear strength functions. While this work covers a considerable fraction of nuclei necessary in such applications (namely, $p$- and $sd$-shell nuclei), future work will also treat $pf$-shell systems and hence complete the CI-SM systematics of dipole PSF necessary for such applications.

A study of photoneutron reactions on ${}^{159}\mathrm{Tb}$ was performed by using quasimonochromatic laser Compton scattering $\gamma$-ray beams provided at the NewSUBARU facility, Japan, along with a high-and-flat efficiency moderated array of ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ counters and an associated neutron multiplicity sorting method. The $(\gamma ,1nX)$, $(\gamma ,2nX)$, $(\gamma ,3nX)$, and $(\gamma ,4nX)$ photoneutron cross sections and average energies of the corresponding photoneutron spectra were measured in the 8.25 to 42.23 MeV energy range, from the vicinity of the neutron emission threshold up to well above the giant dipole resonance region. This dataset constitutes the first measurement of average photoneutron energies in ${}^{159}\mathrm{Tb}$ to date. The total photoneutron cross section $\sigma (\gamma ,sn)$ was determined by summing the partial $(\gamma ,inX)$ components. Our $(\gamma ,1nX)$ and $(\gamma ,sn)$ cross sections show reasonable agreement with those measured by R. Bergère et al. [Nucl. Phys. A 121, 463 (1968)] at Saclay, while our $(\gamma ,2nX)$ results align well with the Livermore measurements by R. L. Bramblett et al. [Phys. Rev. 133, B869 (1964)]. This contradicts the recommendation of B. L. Berman et al. [Phys. Rev. C 36, 1286 (1987)] to resolve the Saclay-Livermore discrepancies by applying a uniform scaling factor across all reaction channels. The present experimental excitation functions and photoneutron energies were compared with statistical model calculations performed with the empire and talys codes. We found that the competition between the $(\gamma ,inX)$ reaction channels is better reproduced using the Modified Lorentzian (MLO2) photon strength function (PSF) model than with the Simple Modified Lorentzian (SMLO) PSF model. After adjustment of the PSF on the photoabsorption cross section, the experimental photoneutron emission cross sections are found to be rather well reproduced by both the empire and talys codes. However, average neutron energies are fairly described only at the lowest photon energies. Based on the present centroid energies of the first and second giant dipole resonance peaks, we obtained the hydrodynamic model prediction of $+6.99\left(42\right)$ b for the intrinsic electric-quadrupole moment of the ${}^{159}\mathrm{Tb}$ ground state.

The most recent $\beta$-decay data for ${}^{156}\mathrm{Eu}$ is over 40 years old, and the $\gamma$-ray intensities are only known with a fractional precision of about $10\%$ or worse. In this work, we present new results for the absolute intensities of more than 60 $\gamma$ rays emitted following the $\beta$ decay of ${}^{156}\mathrm{Eu}$ with many measured to $\lesssim 1\%$ accuracy, representing an order-of-magnitude improvement in precision. This was achieved by leveraging the fission-product beams produced at the CARIBU facility to create radio-pure samples and detecting the radiation with a $4\pi \beta$-particle counter coupled with a precisely efficiency-calibrated HPGe detector at Texas A and M University.

The half-life, $t_{1/2}$, of electron-capture decay of ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ is inversely proportional to the electron density, $\rho \left(0\right)$, at the nucleus. We experimentally measured $t_{1/2}$ of ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ implanted in Nb crystals and found that $t_{1/2}=53.18\pm 0.03$ days at room temperature ($T\approx 293\mathrm{K}$) and $t_{1/2}=53.27\pm 0.03$ days at liquid helium temperature ($T\approx 5\mathrm{K}$). Using density functional theory calculations at $T=0\mathrm{K}$, we found that nearly all ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ atoms occupy the most stable hexahedral interstitial sites [$\rho \left(0\right)=35.509$ a.u.], due to the high activation energy required for substitutional incorporation. In contrast, at $T\approx 293\mathrm{K}$, approximately 73% of ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ atoms migrate to the second-most stable octahedral interstitial sites [$\rho \left(0\right)=35.576$ a.u., which is 0.19% higher than at the hexahedral sites], because the energy difference between the hexahedral and octahedral sites is only 0.008 eV. This satisfactorily explains the reason for the experimental observation that $t_{1/2}$ changes approximately 0.17% from $T\approx 5\mathrm{K}$ to $T\approx 293\mathrm{K}$. Although this temperature dependence appears similar to that of Be metal, the underlying mechanisms are quite different in Nb and Be metal, where in the latter all ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ stay at substitutional sites at $T\approx 5\mathrm{K}$ and about half migrate to basal octahedral interstitial sites at $T\approx 293\mathrm{K}$ [Kuwahara et al.,  Phys. Rev. C 109, 024609 (2024)].

Prescission neutron multiplicities (${\nu }_{\text{pre}}$) provide a sensitive probe of dissipation strength ($\beta$) and the timescales governing fission dynamics. We report a systematic study of neutron emission in the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{232}\mathrm{Th}$ reaction forming the transactinide compound nucleus ${}^{260}\mathrm{Rf}$ over a wide excitation energy range $55\le E^{*}\le 91\mathrm{MeV}$. The extracted pre- and postscission neutron multiplicities are compared with Langevin dynamical model calculations incorporating dissipation and formation delay. It is found that the measured ${\nu }_{\text{pre}}$ are best reproduced only when both large dissipation coefficient ($\beta \approx 25\mathrm{MeV}/\hslash$) and substantial formation delays (${\tau }_{\text{form}}>100 \hslash /\mathrm{MeV}$) are included. The extracted delay time of $\approx 65$ zs for ${}^{260}\mathrm{Rf}$ is comparable to the earlier reported values for the ${}^{256,258}\mathrm{Rf}$ isotopes, pointing towards the possibility of precompound delays in the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}+{}^{232}\mathrm{Th}$ system. The results demonstrate the crucial role of entrance channel effects, particularly projectile-target deformation, in contributing to understand fission dynamics of heavy and superheavy nuclei. The average neutron multiplicity (${\nu }_{\text{sf}}=4.1$) is also determined for the spontaneous fission of ${}^{260}\mathrm{Rf}$ and is found to be in good agreement with the reported values for ${}^{256,258,260}\mathrm{Rf}$ isotopes and superheavy nuclei.

Within the framework of the Akyüz-Winther potential, we introduce a new form of the universal function of nuclear proximity formalism that is directly dependent on the surface diffuseness parameter. We apply this analytical formula in the formalism of the proximity potential 2010 (Prox. 2010) and try to reproduce the empirical data of the fusion barrier heights over a wide mass range of colliding nuclei. Our detailed study reveals that the best-fitting values for the diffuseness parameter are located in a range between $\mathit{a}=0.744$ and 0.892 fm, which is considerably larger than the value of $\mathit{a}\simeq 0.65$ fm deduced from elastic-scattering data. It is found that the ion-ion potential due to the modified form of the Prox. 2010 explains the fusion barrier heights within $\pm 3\%$ on average. With the help of coupled-channels calculations, we calculate and compare with the available experimental data the fusion excitation functions. The results obtained show that the use of the new form of universal function, along with the fitted values of the diffuseness parameter, improves the agreement with the data in comparison with the original form of the Prox. 2010 potential. The present investigation suggests that the energy dependence of the nucleus-nucleus potential through the diffuseness parameter is needed to explain the sub-barrier fusion excitation functions. This means that the energy dependence plays a key role in the problem of the abnormally large diffuseness of the interaction potential.

Recent theoretical analyses show that spin current can be induced by the baryon chemical potential gradient $\nabla {\mu }_B$ which becomes sizable in the fireballs created in heavy-ion collisions (HIC) at a beam energy of $\mathcal{O}\left(10\right)$ GeV. This spin transport phenomenon can be considered as the cousin effect of the spin-Hall effect (SHE) in condensed matter systems with $\nabla {\mu }_B$ playing the role of the analogous electric field. In this letter, we study this important mechanism, which we call “baryonic SHE” or $\nabla {\mu }_B$-induced polarization ($\nabla {\mu }_B$-IP), for differential spin polarization generation that has not been systematically explored before. We predict the signature of the baryonic SHE in HIC using a $(3+1)\mathrm{D}$ viscous hydrodynamic model MUSIC with a multiphase transport initial condition. We propose to use the second Fourier coefficients of the net spin polarization of Λ hyperon as sensitive probes for the baryonic SHE. Those baryonic SHE observables show a qualitative difference in sign and beam energy dependence for the situations with and without the baryonic SHE. Future experimental observation of these distinct qualitative features would provide strong evidence for the existence of this “baryonic SHE” in the hot and dense quantum chromodynamics matter.