Quantifying uncertainties in reduction factors for transfer and knockout reactions

Determine, in a statistically rigorous and model-consistent manner, the uncertainties associated with the reduction factors employed in the analysis of nucleon transfer and nucleon knockout reactions, including the derivation of reliable confidence intervals for these factors across reaction systems and energies.

Background

The review highlights recent efforts to quantify uncertainties in reaction theory inputs, such as optical potentials, using Bayesian frameworks and emulators to propagate these uncertainties to observables like transfer and knockout cross sections. New global optical potential parametrizations with quantified uncertainties have been developed and applied to uncertainty analyses of reduction factors, which scale theoretical predictions to match measured cross sections.

Despite these advances, the determination of uncertainties in reduction factors—often linked to spectroscopic strength quenching and their consistency across different reaction types—remains unresolved. Establishing robust, statistically grounded uncertainty estimates for reduction factors is essential for reliable extraction of nuclear-structure information from transfer and knockout data.