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Light elements were produced in the first few minutes of the Universe through a sequence of nuclear reactions known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) 1 , 2 . Among the light elements produced during BBN 1 , 2 , deuterium is an excellent indicator of cosmological parameters because its abundance is highly sensitive to the primordial baryon density and also depends on the number of neutrino species permeating the early Universe. Although astronomical observations of primordial deuterium abundance have reached percent accuracy 3 , theoretical predictions 4 – 6 based on BBN are hampered by large uncertainties on the cross-section of the deuterium burning D( p , γ ) 3 He reaction. Here we show that our improved cross-sections of this reaction lead to BBN estimates of the baryon density at the 1.6 percent level, in excellent agreement with a recent analysis of the cosmic microwave background 7 . Improved cross-section data were obtained by exploiting the negligible cosmic-ray background deep underground at the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Italy) 8 , 9 . We bombarded a high-purity deuterium gas target 10 with an intense proton beam from the LUNA 400-kilovolt accelerator 11 and detected the γ-rays from the nuclear reaction under study with a high-purity germanium detector. Our experimental results settle the most uncertain nuclear physics input to BBN calculations and substantially improve the reliability of using primordial abundances to probe the physics of the early Universe. High-precision cross-sections of the nuclear reaction that burns deuterium to create helium-3 are used to produce theoretical estimates of the primordial baryon density that are in agreement with recent astronomical observations.

We study the existence of thermodynamic instabilities in the nuclear equation of state relative to the high density regime reached in the central core of compact stars. In the framework of a relativistic mean-field theory, we analyze the asymmetric nuclear properties in beta-equilibrium, including hyperons and Delta-isobar degrees of freedom. We investigate a finite density phase transition characterized by pure hadronic matter with the presence of mechanical instability (relative to the fluctuation of baryon number) and of chemical-diffusive instability (relative to the fluctuation of electric charge concentration). We find that, in the presence of thermodynamic instabilities, two hadronic phases with different values of electric charge content may coexist, with several phenomenological consequences in the physics of compact stars.

We investigate the physical properties of the protoneutron stars in the framework of a relativistic mean-field model and we study the finite-temperature equation of state in β-stable matter at fixed entropy per baryon, in the presence of hyperons, Δ-isobar resonances and trapped neutrinos. In this context, we study the possible presence of thermodynamic instabilities and a phase transition from nucleonic matter to resonance-dominated Δ-matter can take place. Such a phase transition is characterized by both mechanical instability (fluctuations on the baryon density) and by chemical-diffusive instability (fluctuations on the isospin concentration) in asymmetric nuclear matter. We show that such statistical effects could play a crucial role in the structure and in the evolution of the protoneutron stars.

We investigate the physical properties of the protoneutron stars in the framework of a relativistic mean-field theory based on nonextensive statistical mechanics, characterized by power-law distributions. We study the finite-temperature equation of state in, β-stable matter at fixed entropy per baryon, in the absence and in the presence of hyperons and trapped neutrinos. We show that nonextensive power-law effects could play a crucial role in the structure and in the evolution of the protoneutron stars also for small deviations from the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics.

We investigate the possible thermodynamic instability in a warm and dense nuclear medium where a phase transition from nucleonic matter to resonance-dominated Δ-matter can take place. Such a phase transition is characterized by both mechanical instability (fluctuations on the baryon density) and by chemical-diffusive instability (fluctuations on the isospin concentration) in asymmetric nuclear matter. Similarly to the liquid-gas phase transition, the nucleonic and the Δ-matter phase have a different isospin density in the mixed phase. In the liquid-gas phase transition, the process of producing a larger neutron excess in the gas phase is referred to as isospin fractionation. A similar effects can occur in the nucleon- Δmatter phase transition due essentially to a Δ- excess in the Δ-matter phase in asymmetric nuclear matter. In this context we also discuss the relevance of Δ-isobar degrees of freedom in the bulk properties and in the maximum mass of compact stars.

Starting on the basis of q-deformed calculus and q-symmetric oscillator algebra, we introduce a generalized Schrödinger equation which admits factorized time-space solutions and the free plane wave functions can be expressed in terms of the so-called basic-hypergeometric functions. In this framework, q-deformed adjoint and q-hermitian operator properties occur i a natural way in order to satisfy the fundamental quantum mechanics asumptions.

The measurand value, the conclusions, and the decisions inferred from measurements may depend on the models used to explain and to analyze the results. In this paper, the problems of identifying the most appropriate model and of assessing the model contribution to the uncertainty are formulated and solved in terms of Bayesian model selection and model averaging. As computational cost of this approach increases with the dimensionality of the problem, a numerical strategy, based on multimodal ellipsoidal nested sampling, to integrate over the nuisance parameters and to compute the measurand post-data distribution is outlined. In order to illustrate the numerical strategy, by use of MATHEMATICA an elementary example concerning a bimodal, two-dimensional distribution has also been studied.

We investigate the possible thermodynamic instability in a warm and dense nuclear medium where a phase transition from nucleonic matter to resonance-dominated Δ-matter can take place. Such a phase transition is characterized by both mechanical instability (fluctuations on the baryon density) and by chemical-diffusive instability (fluctuations on the isospin concentration) in asymmetric nuclear matter. Similarly to the liquid-gas phase transition, the nucleonic and the Δ-matter phase have a different isospin density in the mixed phase. In the liquid-gas phase transition, the process of producing a larger neutron excess in the gas phase is referred to as isospin fractionation. A similar effects can occur in the nucleon-Δ matter phase transition due essentially to a Δ− excess in the Δ-matter phase in asymmetric nuclear matter. In this context, we study the hadronic equation of state by means of an effective quantum relativistic mean field model with the inclusion of the full octet of baryons, the Δ-isobar degrees of freedom, and the lightest pseudoscalar and vector mesons. Finally, we will investigate the presence of thermodynamic instabilities in a hot and dense nuclear medium where phases with different values of antibaryon-baryon ratios and strangeness content may coexist. Such a physical regime could be in principle investigated in the future high-energy compressed nuclear matter experiments where will make it possible to create compressed baryonic matter with a high net baryon density.

We investigate the bulk properties of protoneutron stars in the framework of a relativistic mean field theory based on nonextensive statistical mechanics, originally proposed by C. Tsallis and characterized by power-law quantum distributions. We study the relevance of nonextensive statistical effects on the β-stable equation of state at fixed entropy per baryon, for nucleonic and hyperonic matter. We concentrate our analysis in the maximum heating and entropy per baryon s = 2 stage and T ≈ 40 ÷ 80 MeV. This is the phase, at high temperature and high baryon density, in which the presence of nonextensive effects may alter more sensibly the thermodynamical and mechanical properties of the protoneutron star. We show that nonextensive power-law effects could play a crucial role in the structure and in the evolution of the protoneutron stars also for small deviations from the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics.

We study a nonlinear nuclear equation of state in the framework of a relativistic mean field theory. We investigate the possible thermodynamic instability in a warm and dense asymmetric nuclear medium where a phase transition from nucleonic matter to resonance dominated Δ matter can take place. Such a phase transition is characterized by both mechanical instability (fluctuations on the baryon density) and by chemical-diffusive instability (fluctuations on the isospin concentration) in asymmetric nuclear matter. Similarly to the liquid-gas phase transition, the nucleonic and the Δ-matter phase have a different isospin density in the mixed phase. In the liquid-gas phase transition, the process of producing a larger neutron excess in the gas phase is referred to as isospin fractionation. A similar effects can occur in the nucleon-Δ matter phase transition due essentially to a negative Δ-particles excess in asymmetric nuclear matter. In this context, we investigate also the effects of power law effects, due to the possible presence of nonextensive statistical mechanics effects.