Nicolas Schunck, LLNL
When
Where
Theory of Nuclear Fission
Abstract: Nuclear fission - the process by which heavy atomic nuclei split into two or more fragments - was discovered more than 80 years ago. Applications of the process to produce energy in nuclear power plants have been around for decades and have attracted renewed interest with the push toward small modular reactors. In fundamental science, fission is known to play a critical role in the formation of heavy elements in the universe, and it is one of the main drivers in determining the stability of superheavy elements. Yet, our understanding of the fission process remains very empirical and fragmentary: while we have very sophisticated models that are well calibrated on existing experimental data, we lack a truly predictive theory capable of, e.g., simulating the fission of the very short-lived radioactive isotopes made during nucleosynthesis. How does fission emerge from nuclear forces between protons and neutrons and from the laws of quantum mechanics? How accurately can we predict the characteristics of this process? This talk will give a high-level overview of modern theoretical approaches to fission, where fully quantum-mechanical methods are combined with high-performance computing and, more recently, machine learning techniques to provide a consistent and increasingly realistic description of this phenomenon.
Bio: Nicolas Schunck is a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he leads efforts in computational nuclear theory, with special emphasis on fission science and applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning to nuclear theory. Nicolas got his PhD from the University of Strasbourg, France in 2001. After the usual postdoctoral journey that took him to the UK, Spain, Poland and Tennessee, he joined LLNL in 2010. [https://pls.llnl.gov/about/people/meet-pls-people/nicolas-schunck]
3:00 PM in PAS 201 / Zoom https://arizona.zoom.us/j/86395646910
Refreshments in PAS 236, 2:30PM