Nuclear Theory·nucl-th

Monday·November 10, 2025

5 papers—1 primary·4 cross-listed

02
Effective Field Theories for Neutron Stars Physics
J. M. Alarcón🇪🇸 · E. Lope-Oter🇪🇸 · Y. Cano🇪🇸
There is an increasing interest in the community for the Neutron Stars and what we can learn from them. In this review we show how chiral effective field theory, combined with many-body methods, can provide important results that connect Neutron Star properties at zero temperature to nuclear physics and allows to use these compact objects as laboratories of new physics.
↳ hep-phastro-ph.HEnucl-thEur.Phys.J.ST(2026)·7 citations
03
Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering Cross Sections at Medium Energies
Vishvas Pandey🇺🇸
The weak interactions of neutrinos with other Standard Model particles are well described within the Standard Model of particle physics. However, modern accelerator-based neutrino experiments employ nuclei as targets, where neutrinos interact with bound nucleons, turning a seemingly simple electroweak process into a complex many-body problem in nuclear physics. At the time of writing this Encyclopedia of Particle Physics chapter, neutrino-nucleus interactions remain one of the leading sources of systematic uncertainty in accelerator-based neutrino oscillation measurements. This chapter provides a pedagogical overview of neutrino interactions with nuclei in the medium-energy regime, spanning a few hundred MeV to several GeV. It introduces the fundamental electroweak formalism, outlines the dominant interaction mechanisms - including quasielastic scattering, resonance production, and deep inelastic scattering - and discusses how nuclear effects such as Fermi motion, nucleon-nucleon correlations, meson-exchange currents, and final-state interactions modify observable cross sections. The chapter also presents a brief survey of the foundational and most widely used theoretical models for neutrino-nucleus cross sections, together with an overview of current and upcoming accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments that are shaping the field. Rather than targeting experts, this chapter serves as a primer for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and early-career researchers entering the field. It provides a concise foundation for understanding neutrino-nucleus scattering, its relevance to oscillation experiments, and its broader connections to both particle and nuclear physics.
↳ hep-phhep-exnucl-thEncyclopedia of Particle Physics, Elsevie…·6 citations
04
The $Z α^{2}$ correction to superallowed beta decays in effective field theory and implications for $∣ V_{u d} ∣$
Zehua Cao🇺🇸 · Richard J. Hill🇺🇸 · Ryan Plestid🇺🇸 · Peter Vander Griend🇺🇸
Superallowed ( $0^{+} \to 0^{+}$ ) beta decays currently provide the most precise extraction of quark mixing in the Standard Model. Their interpretation as a measurement of $∣ V_{u d} ∣$ relies on a reliable first-principles computation of QED radiative corrections expressed as a series in $Z α$ and $α$ . In this work, we provide the first model-independent result for two-loop, $O (Z α^{2})$ , long-distance radiative corrections where the nuclei are treated as heavy point-like particles. We use renormalization group analysis to obtain new results at $O (Z α^{3})$ for the coefficient of double-logarithms in the ratio of the maximal beta energy to the inverse nuclear size, $\Em / R^{- 1}$ . We use the Kinoshita-Lee-Nauenberg theorem to obtain new results at $O (Z^{2} α^{3})$ for the coefficient of logarithms in the ratio of maximal beta energy to the electron mass, $lo g (2 \Em / \me)$ . We identify a structure-dependent, and therefore short-distance, contribution to the traditional $Z α^{2}$ correction that should be revisited.. We provide the first comprehensive update to the long-distance corrections in almost forty years and comment on the impact of our findings for extractions of $∣ V_{u d} ∣$ . We find that shifts in the long-distance corrections are $2.5 \times$ larger than past estimates of their uncertainty, $1.5 \times$ larger than the statistical uncertainty from the combined fit of superallowed decays, and about $1/2$ the size of estimated systematic error, which stems dominantly from nuclear structure effects.
↳ hep-phnucl-exnucl-thPRD(2026)·11 citations
05
Radiative corrections to superallowed beta decays at $O (α^{2} Z)$
Òscar L. Crosas🇨🇭 · Emanuele Mereghetti🇺🇸
We compute $O (α^{2} Z)$ radiative corrections to superallowed $β$ decays with a heavy-particle effective field theory that systematically describes the interactions of low-energy ultrasoft photons with nuclei. We calculate two-loop virtual and one-loop real-virtual amplitudes by reducing the Feynman integrals to a set of master integrals, which we solve analytically using a variety of techniques. These techniques can be applied to other phenomenologically interesting observables. The ultrasoft corrections can then be combined with contributions arising from the exchange of potential photons to obtain the complete $O (α^{2} Z)$ correction to the decay rate, with resummation of large logarithms of the electron energy times the nuclear radius. We find that $O (α^{2} Z)$ ultrasoft loops induce a relative correction to the decay rate that ranges from $0.7 \cdot 1 0^{- 3}$ in the decay of $^{10}$ C to $3.6 \cdot 1 0^{- 3}$ in the decay of $^{54}$ Co, and will thus impact the extraction of $V_{u d}$ at the permille level. We show that the inclusion of these corrections reduces the residual renormalization scale dependence of the decay rate to a negligible level, making missing ultrasoft perturbative corrections a subdominant source of theoretical error.
↳ hep-phhep-exnucl-exnucl-thJHEP(2026)·10 citations

Affiliations

first authorsco-authorsvia INSPIRE

Effective Field Theories for Neutron Stars Physics

Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering Cross Sections at Medium Energies

The Zα2 correction to superallowed beta decays in effective field theory and implications for ∣Vud​∣

Radiative corrections to superallowed beta decays at O(α2Z)

Affiliations

The $Z α^{2}$ correction to superallowed beta decays in effective field theory and implications for $∣ V_{u d} ∣$

Radiative corrections to superallowed beta decays at $O (α^{2} Z)$