Multi-neutron systems have attracted a long-standing attention in nuclear physics. In several decades, experimental attempts have been made with a particular focus on the tetra-neutron system. Among them, the two different experiments, the double-charge exchange reaction on 4He and the alpha-particle knockout reaction from the 8He, show a sharp peak just above the threshold in the four-neutron spectra, which could be a signature of a "resonant state", separate from a broad bump structure at higher excitation energy regions. Both the experiments have been realized by using the 8He beam above 150 A MeV at the RIKEN RI Beam Factory.
Details of the two experiments including basic idea, experimental techniques, and analysis are presented as well as a historical review of previous experimental attempts. Emphasis is made for the experimental conditions for populating a kinematically isolated tetra-neutron system with very small momentum transfer. The spectral shape is discussed by means of reaction processes and correlations in the final tetra-neutron system with several recent theoretical studies.

Binary neutron star (NS) merger is a promising site for the rapid neutron capture nucleosynthesis (r-process). The radioactive decay of newly synthesized elements powers electromagnetic radiation, as called kilonova. The detection of gravitational wave from a NS merger GW170817 and the observation of the associated kilonova AT2017gfo have provided with us the evidence that r-process happens in the NS merger. However, the abundance pattern synthesized in this event, which is important to understand the origin of the r-process elements, is not yet clear. In this talk, I will first introduce an overview and current understanding of kilonova. Then, I will discuss our recent findings of elemental features in photospheric spectra of kilonova toward identification of elements.

The movement and deformation of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle provide critical insights into the evolution of earthquake processes and future earthquake potentials. Crustal deformation can be modeled by dislocation models that represent earthquake faults in the crust as defects in a continuum medium. In this study, we propose a physics-informed deep learning approach to model crustal deformation due to earthquakes. Neural networks can represent continuous displacement fields in arbitrary geometrical structures and mechanical properties of rocks by incorporating governing equations and boundary conditions into a loss function. The polar coordinate system is introduced to accurately model the displacement discontinuity on a fault as a boundary condition. We illustrate the validity and usefulness of this approach through example problems with strike-slip faults. This approach has a potential advantage over conventional approaches in that it could be straightforwardly extended to high dimensional, anelastic, nonlinear, and inverse problems.

iTHEMS-AIP Joint Colloquium

Optimal transport (OT) has recently gained a lot of interest in machine learning. It is a natural tool to compare in a geometrically faithful way probability distributions. It finds applications in both supervised learning (using geometric loss functions) and unsupervised learning (to perform generative model fitting). OT is however plagued by the curse of dimensionality, since it might require a number of samples which grows exponentially with the dimension. In this talk, I will explain how to leverage entropic regularization methods to define computationally efficient loss functions, approximating OT with a better sample complexity. More information and references can be found on the website of our book "Computational Optimal Transport" (see related link below).