Nuclear Reactions & QCD Spectroscopy

Andrew Jackura,

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

It is widely accepted that all observed nuclear phenomena emerge from the strong interactions between quarks and gluons as governed by Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD). Reactions between hadrons, the bound states of quarks and gluons, are responsible for most nuclear processes observed in nature. Quantifying low-energy nuclear reactions directly from QCD, however, remains challenging due to the non-perturbative nature of theory. I will present an overview of an on-going program which aims to connect QCD to nuclear reactions.  I will focus on the challenges of accessing the excited hadron spectrum, and illustrate how newly developed theoretical tools allow us to compute few-body nuclear reactions from first principles QCD.