Zhonghao Sun

Research Interests

My research focuses on advancing our understanding of nuclear structures and decays by developing accurate and reliable quantum many-body methods. The primary goal is to make accurate predictions about nuclear properties to answer the following questions: How do low-energy phenomena such as nuclear deformation and rotation emerge from a quantum many-body system dominated by strong nuclear forces? Where are the limits of nuclear stability? This study helps to explain exotic nuclear phenomena observed at rare isotope facilities and may contribute to ongoing experiments searching for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

A significant part of my work involves quantifying uncertainties in theoretical calculations, a major challenge in nuclear physics. By using advanced quantum many-body methods (primarily coupled cluster theory) and their efficient emulators based on eigenvector continuation, as well as modern statistical tools and supercomputing resources, we can reliably predict nuclear properties and transitions derived from chiral effective field theory (Chiral EFT) while accounting for various sources of uncertainty.