The description of the quantum dynamics of many interacting particles is a great challenge in many fields of physics. Even simple observables such as the number of particles might be difficult to determine when the system encounters a violent perturbation. This is the case, for instance in collisions of molecules, atomic clusters, or nuclei. Our goal is rather simple: counting the number of transfered particles in such a collision. To keep the amount of work for the physicist and his computer to a reasonable level, mean-field approaches are considered rather than solving the full Schrödinger equation. For the average number of transfered particles, this leads to the time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) theory. For their fluctuations, however, we need a more elaborated mean-field approach based on the Balian-Veneroni variational principle. These formalisms are applied to heavy-ion collisions.

Dr Simenel received his PhD degree from University of Caen (France) and obtained a position at CEA/Saclay (France) in 2003. He undertook research in the Michigan State University (US) in 2004-2005. Since 2009, he is a research fellow of the Nuclear Physics  Department of ANU, working in collaboration with Profs Dasgupta and Hinde. He is doing most of his research on quantum many-body dynamics with applications to nuclear collisions. He teaches particle and nuclear physics at ANU and nuclear theory at the University of Caen (France).

Drinks and light refreshments will be provided in the
RSPSE Link Tea Room after the Seminar
ALL WELCOME