Nuclei at the Extremes

    Nuclei form the core of matter, but their description in terms of their fundamental constituents - quarks and gluons - remains elusive. The Jefferson Lab program has provided key insight into nuclear structure at extreme energy and density scales. A connection between high-density configurations and the quark structure of nuclei has raised significant questions about the modification of protons and neutrons within nuclei with potential impact on our understanding of neutron stars, neutron structure, and a range of high-energy e-A, nu-A, and A-A scattering measurements. 

    I will summarize our current understanding based on electron scattering measurements, highlight the impact of these studies and key outstanding questions, and discuss future measurements making use of the Jefferson Lab energy upgrade and the future Electron-Ion Collider.

All the dark we can not see - the state-of-the art in direct searches for particle dark matter

    One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe. The dark matter could be made of new, yet undiscovered elementary particles, with allowed masses and interaction strengths with normal matter spanning an enormous range.  Among these, particles with masses in the MeV-TeV range could be directly observed via elastic or inelastic scatters with atomic nuclei or with electrons in ultra-low background detectors operated deep underground.  After an introduction to the dark matter problem and the phenomenology of direct dark matter detection, I will discuss the most promising direct detection techniques, addressing their current and future science reach, as well as their complementarity.