Speaker: Shannon Cowell (Los Alamos National Lab.)

Title:
Electroweak interactions - a correlated basis approach

Abstract:
Our understanding of systems ranging from nuclei to supernovae depend
upon the electroweak interaction.  Studies of neutrino properties rely
on accurately determining the weak interaction with nuclei.  Neutrino
interactions with matter determine the time evolution of many
astrophysical systems.  And of course electrons serve as our primary
source of information on the structure of nuclei.  For light systems,
these interactions are well understood and calculated.  However, for
heavier nuclei, we rely on models which are not yet as successful.
These models often incorporate the effects of the nuclear environment
through effective interactions, and ignore these correlation effects on
all other operators.  This is inconsistent and the inaccuracies
associated with such approximations must be understood.  Utilizing the
correlated basis formalism, we have studied the correlation dependence
of one- and two-body effective electroweak operators.  I will present
general properties of many of these effective operators as well as their
impact on matter response functions and sum rules.