Dr. Simone Perrotta is a nuclear reaction theorist: he develops models to study how the structure of atomic nuclei is connected (through the nuclear force) to their behavior when they collide at "low" energies (~ 200 MeV), as they do in stars, supernovae, and fusion reactors.
Simone worked on several topics connected to this overarching goal, including: charge screening effects appearing in reactions at quiescent-stellar energies, two-nucleon transfer reactions of astrophysical interest, charge-exchange reactions relevant for neutrinoless-double-beta-decay experimental searches, and nucleon-nucleus potentials able to describe reactions on beta-unstable nuclei.
At WashU, Simone uses machine learning and Bayesian inference techniques to improve our knowledge of effective-field-theory nucleon-nucleon interactions. Our goal is to estimate not only what the nuclear force looks like, but also a reliable level of (un)certainty on the current knowledge, given the experimental data and models we possess. The nucleon-nucleon interaction, in turn, is a key ingredient in advanced many-body models, such as Quantum Monte Carlo, which provide information on the microscopic structure of atomic nuclei.