Electroweak interactions with nucleons and nuclei

The atomic nucleus and its inhabitants (nucleons and mesons) are complex quantum
mechanical systems. Progress in our understanding of the dynamics of nucleons and
nuclei is pushed forward by experiments that either reject or confirm hypotheses. We
wish to conduct theoretical research that aims at extracting the physical information
from a new generation of experiments probing nuclei and nucleons. First, we wish to
develop a comprehensive framework for modelling neutrino-nucleus interactions. This
theoretical framework should help in unravelling the mass properties of neutrinos and
learn more about the axial properties of nucleons. Second, we will continue working
on a model for interpreting strangeness production from the nucleon. The properties
of the ejected strange particles carry information about the sea (or, vacuum) properties
of the nucleon and about the quantum properties of three-quark systems. Third, we
wish to develop models that can describe nuclei under extreme conditions of density,
momentum, and proton-to-neutron ratios. This addresses the issue of the so-called nonnucleonic
components of the nuclear wave function and the equation-of-state of hadronic
matter.