Giant and soft modes of excitation in nuclear structure and astrophysics

The workshop will focus on the properties of dipole excitations, in particular at low energies, experimentally studied with a variety of probes, and theoretically described by a number of approaches going beyond time-dependent mean field approximations. The emphasis will be placed on the role these modes play in nuclear structure, as evidenced in neutron radii and neutron skin (halo), as well as medium polarization effects in both finite nuclei and neutron-rich environments in astrophysics.

The main objective of the workshop is to elaborate research strategies for better understanding the microscopic mechanisms underlying the low-energy dipole excitations, especially in nuclear systems away from the stability valley. Capabilities and challenges of currently available methods will be assessed in a dialogue between the theoretical and experimental nuclear physics communities. Future directions of advancing the many-body techniques toward achieving the spectroscopic accuracy will be outlined.