Welcome to the TALENT Website!

Look under the About menu to learn about the TALENT initiative. Look under the Membership menu to sign up to join TALENT and to get a list of current individual and institutional members.

Materials for past TALENT courses: [2020] [2019] [2018] [2017] [2016] [2015] [before 2015]

TALENT course to be offered in 2025

Quantum Computing for Nuclear Physics

For nuclear theorists, the overarching challenge is to develop a comprehensive description of nuclei and their reactions, grounded in the fundamental interactions between the constituent nucleons with quantifiable uncertainties. As experimental frontiers have shifted to the study of rare isotopes, the predictive power of successful phenomenological approaches like the shell model and density functional theory is challenged by the scarcity of nearby experimental data to constrain model parameters. Therefore, it is expected that few-body and many-body methods will play an increasingly prominent role to help improve the predictive power of such methods. These methods rely on theoretical approximations whose applicabilities are often limited by the dimensionality of the specific problem being studied. In recent years, there has been considerable progress in developing quantum-computing algorithms applied to quantum many-body systems, with the hope to circumvent many of the classically intractable problems. This new edition of the TALENT Course 9 aims at bringing together the efforts of nuclear many-body theorists, quantum information theorists, and mathematicians in order to present and discuss algorithms for studying nuclear systems using recent progress in quantum information theory. The school will take place at the ECT* (Trento, Italy) from Monday June 16 till Friday July 4 2025. For more information, see here. The registration is now open until April 11, 2025, on this website.

TALENT course given in 2024

Nuclear Theory for Astrophysics

The goal of this second edition of the TALENT Course 7: Nuclear theory for astrophysics was to provide the attendees with high level training on nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics from various perspectives that include the Equation of State (EOS), neutron star mergers, and supernovae—and their combined impact in spearheading the brand new era of multi-messenger astronomy. It took place at the ECT* (Trento Italy) from 15 July to 2 August 2024. The key lecturers were Almudena Arcones, Bruno Giacomazzo, and Jorge Piekarewicz, as well as other experts in the various fields of relevance to the school. More information, including lecture notes can be found on the course webpage course webpage.

TALENT course given in 2022

Effective Field Theories in Light Nuclei: from Structure to Reactions

This second TALENT Course 3 on few-body methods in nuclear physics has been held at the MITP on the campus of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) from 25 July to 12 August 2022. The principal lecturers were Sonia Bacca, Nir Barnea, Pierre Capel, Hans-Werner Hammer, Kai Hebeler and Daniel Phillips. See the course webpage https://indico.mitp.uni-mainz.de/event/279/ for more information and to access all the material of the school (lecture notes, exercise sheets and computer codes). NB: Following the project led by the students on breakup reactions with halo nuclei, a re-analysis of the Coulomb breakup of 19C has been published as a regular article within the European Journal of Physics A:https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-023-01181-7

TALENT course given in 2020 and 2021:

Nuclear Talent course on Machine Learning and Data Analysis for Nuclear Physics

Due to Covid, the Nuclear Talent course on Machine Learning and Data Analysis for Nuclear Physics has been given fully online between 22 July and 3 August 2020: https://github.com/NuclearTalent/MachineLearningECT and with quick display of all teaching material at https://nucleartalent.github.io/MachineLearningECT/doc/web/course.html and between 19 July and 27 July 2021: https://github.com/NuclearTalent/MachineLearningECT2021 and with quick display of all teaching material at https://nucleartalent.github.io/MachineLearningECT2021/doc/web/course.html The principal instructors were Daniel Bazin (MSU), Morten Hjorth-Jensen (MSU), Michelle Kuchera (Davidson), Sean Liddick (NSCL), and Raghuram Ramanujan (Davidson math and computer science).

TALENT courses given in 2019:

The second edition of Course 1: Nuclear forces entitled "From quarks and gluons to nuclear forces and structure" was held July 15 to August 2, 2019 at the ECT* in Trento. The main lecturers were Zohreh Davoudi, Evgeny Epelbaum, Dean Lee, Tom Luu, Francesco Pederiva, and Andrea Shindler. See the course website for materials. Contacts: Dean Lee (leed@frib.msu.edu) and Andrea Shindler (shindler at frib.msu.edu).

The second edition of Course 6: Theory for exploring nuclear reaction experiments was held from June 3 to 21, 2019 at FRIB (Michigan State University) in East Lansing, MI. The principal lecturers included Carl Brune, James DeBoer, Charlotte Elster, and Sofia Quaglioni. See the course webpage for lecture and exercise materials.
Contact: Charlotte Elster (elster@ohio.edu).

The first edition of Course 11 on Learning from Data:Bayesian Methods and Machine Learning was held from June 10 to 28, 2019 at the University of York in the UK. The main lecturers were Christian Forssen, Dick Furnstahl, and Daniel Phillips. See the github course web page and repository for materials, including many Jupyter notebooks.
Contact: Dick Furnstahl (furnstahl.1@osu.edu).

2018 TALENT course in China (July 16-August 6)

The 2018 Nuclear TALENT course on Many-Body Methods for Nuclear Physics, from Structure to Reactions, was held at Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, P.R. China, from July 16 to August 6. See the course home page for details about the course and for materials.

2018 TALENT course at the INT (July 9-27)

The first edition of Course 10 on "Fundamental Symmetries and Neutrinos" was held at the Institute for Nuclear Theory in Seattle, WA from July 9 to July 27, 2018. This course introduced students to the exciting physics of fundamental symmetry tests and neutrino studies in nuclear physics, including implications for both the Standard Model and possible physics beyond the Standard Model.

The primary lecturers were Vincenzo Cirigliano (Los Alamos National Laboratory, cirigliano@lanl.gov) and Michael Ramsey-Musolf (University of Massachusetts Amherst, mjrm@physics.umass.edu). Additional lectures were provided by guest seminar speakers.

2017 TALENT course at the ECT* (July 3-21)

The second edition of Course 5 on "Theory for Exploring Nuclear Structure Experiments", was held at the European Center for Theoretical Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*), Trento, Italy from July 3 to July 21, 2017. The lecturers were Alex Brown (Michigan State University), Alexandra Gade (Michigan State University), Robert Grzywacz (University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Morten Hjorth-Jensen (Michigan State University and University of Oslo), and Gustav Jansen (Oak Ridge National Laboratory).

The course materials can be found at the course github site.

Contact: Morten Hjorth-Jensen, hjensen@msu.edu

TALENT courses given in 2016

Two TALENT courses were offered in 2016. The topics, principal lecturers, and application links were:

Course 4: Density Functional Theory and Self-Consistent Methods at the University of York in York, UK was held from July 17 to August 6, 2016. The principal lecturers were Jacek Dobaczewski, Andrea Idini, Alessandro Pastore, and Nicolas Schunck. For general information on this course, go to Course 4: Density functional theory and self-consistent methods and this link. The written course materials and videos of the lectures are freely available. Contact: Jacek Dobaczewski (jacek.dobaczewski@york.ac.uk).

Course 9: Quantum Monte Carlo Methods for Nuclear Physics and Related Areas at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina was held from from July 11 to July 29, 2016. The principal lecturers included Joe Carlson, Joaquín Drut, Stefano Gandolfi, and Dean Lee. For information on the course, go to Course 9: High-performance computing and computational tools for nuclear physics and the local website. Lectures and codes are freely available; this is the schedule. Contact: Stefano Gandolfi (stefano@lanl.gov).

TALENT courses given in 2015

Course 7: Nuclear Physics of Neutron Stars and Supernovae at the University of Washington Institute for Nuclear Theory was held in Seattle, WA, from June 21 to July 11, 2015. For information on the course, go to Course 7: Nuclear theory for astrophysics.

Course 2: Many-Body Methods for Nuclear Physics at GANIL was held in Caen, France, from July 5 to July 25, 2015. 'For information on the course, go to Course 2: Many-body methods for nuclear physics.

Course 3: Few-Body Methods and Nuclear Reactions at the ECT* was held in Trento, Italy, from July 19 to August 8, 2015. For information on the course, go to Course 3: Few-body methods and nuclear reactions.

TALENT courses given before 2015

Course 1: Nuclear forces and their impact on structure, reactions, and astrophysics was held at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA from July 1 to July 19, 2013. Course organizers were Dick Furnstahl, Morten Hjorth-Jensen, Witek Nazarewicz, and Achim Schwenk.

Course 4: Density Functional Theory and Self-Consistent Methods ran at the ECT* in Trento, in collaboration with the University of Trento, from July 14 to August 1, 2014. The course materials (projects, slides, programs, discussion groups, etc.) can be found here.

Course 5: Theory for exploring nuclear structure experiments was held from August 11 to August 29 in 2014 at GANIL, Caen, France and was organized in collaboration with the University of Basse- Normandie.

Course 6: Theory for exploring nuclear reaction experiments was delivered by Filomena Nunes (Michigan State University), Pierre Descovement (ULB, Brussels), Antonio Moro (University of Sevilla), Jeff Tostevin and Edward Simpson (University of Surrey). It took place at GANIL, Caen, France, from July 1st to July 20, 2013.

Course 7: Origin of the Elements was held at Michigan State University from May 28 to June 13, 2014. All course material, slides, codes, exercises, etc. are here (see also the overview here).

Course 9: High-performance computing and computational tools for nuclear physics ran at the ECT* in Trento, in collaboration with the University of Trento, from June 25 to July 13, 2012. Course details and materials can be found here.