Transition Density and Pressure at the Inner Edge of Neutron Star Crusts
Using the nuclear symmetry energy that has been recently constrained by the isospin diffusion data in intermediate-energy heavy ion collisions, we have studied the transition density and pressure at the inner edge of neutron star crusts, and they are found to be 0.040 fm$^{-3}$ $\leq \rho_{t}\leq 0.065$ fm$^{-3}$ and 0.01 MeV/fm$^{3}$ $\leq P_{t}\leq 0.26$ MeV/fm$^{3}$, respectively, in both the dynamical and thermodynamical approaches. We have also found that the widely used parabolic approximation to the equation of state of asymmetric nuclear matter gives significantly higher values of core-crust transition density and pressure, especially for stiff symmetry energies. With these newly determined transition density and pressure, we have obtained an improved relation between the mass and radius of neutron stars.

title: Shear viscosity of nuclear matter
abstract: In this talk I report my recent study on the shear viscosity of neutron-rich nuclear matter from a relaxation time approach. An isospinand momentum-dependent interaction is used in the study. Effects of density, temperature, and isospin asymmetry of nuclear matter on its shear viscosity have been discussed. Similar to the symmetry energy, the symmetry shear viscosity is defined and its density and temperature dependence are studied.

title: Imprints of Nuclear Symmetry Energy on Properties of Neutron Stars
abstract: Significant progress has been made in recent years in constraining the density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy using terrestrial nuclear laboratory data. Around and below the nuclear matter saturation density, the experimental constraints start to merge in a relatively narrow region. At supra-saturation densities, there are, however, still large uncertainties. After summarizing the latest experimental constraints on the density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy, we highlight a few recent studies examining imprints of nuclear symmetry energy on the binding energy, energy release during hadron-quark phase transitions as well as the ω-mode frequency and damping time of gravitational wave emission of neutron stars.

title: Anisotropic flows and dihadron correlations in heavy ion collisions
abstract: Using a multiphase transport model that includes both initial partonic and final hadronic scatterings, we have studied anisotropic flows and dihadron correla tions as functions of pseudorapidity and azimuthal angular differences between trigger and associated particles in heavy ion collisions at LHC. With parameters in the model determined from fitting t he measured multiplicity density of mid-pseudorapidity charged particles in central collis ions and their elliptic flow in mid-central collisions, the calculated higher-order anisotropic flows from the two-particle cumulant method reproduce approximately those measured in experiments. Similar to experimental results, the two-dimensional dihadron correlations at most central collisions show a ridge structure at the near side and a broad structure at the away side. The short- and long-range dihadron azimuthal correlations, corresponding to small and large pseudorapidity differences, respectively, are studied for triggering particles with different transverse mom enta and are found to be qualitatively consistent with experimental results.

title: Nuclear constraints on non-Newtonian gravity at femtometer scale
abstract: Effects of the non-Newtonian gravity on properties of finite nuclei are studied by consistently incorporating both the direct and exchange contribution of the Yukawa potential in the Hartree–Fock approach using a well-tested Skyrme force for the strong interaction. It is shown for the first time that the strength of the Yukawa term in the non-Newtonian gravity is limited to log (|α|) < 1.75/[λ(fm)]0.54 + 33.6 within the length scale of λ = 1 − 10 fm in order for the calculated properties of finite nuclei not to be in conflict with accurate experimental data available.

title: Locating the inner edge of the neutron star crust using terrestrial nuclear laboratory data
abstract: Within both dynamical and thermodynamical approaches using the equation of state for neutron-rich nuclear matter constrained by the recent isospin diffusion data from heavy-ion reactions in the same subsaturation density range as the neutron star crust, the density and pressure at the inner edge separating the liquid core from the solid crust of neutron stars are determined to be $0.040 {\mathrm{fm}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}\ensuremath{\leqslant}{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{t}\ensuremath{\leqslant}0.065 {\mathrm{fm}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ and 0.01 MeV/${\mathrm{fm}}^{3}\ensuremath{\leqslant}{P}_{t}\ensuremath{\leqslant}0.26$ MeV/${\mathrm{fm}}^{3}$, respectively. These together with the observed minimum crustal fraction of the total moment of inertia allow us to set a new limit for the radius of the Vela pulsar significantly different from the previous estimate. It is further shown that the widely used parabolic approximation to the equation of state of asymmetric nuclear matter leads systematically to significantly higher core-crust transition densities and pressures, especially with stiffer symmetry energy functionals.

title: Extracting the jet transport coefficient from jet quenching in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
abstract: Within five different approaches to parton propagation and energy loss in dense matter, a phenomenological study of experimental data on suppression of large $p_T$ single inclusive hadrons in heavy-ion collisions at both RHIC and LHC was carried out. The evolution of bulk medium used in the study for parton propagation was given by 2+1D or 3+1D hydrodynamic models which are also constrained by experimental data on bulk hadron spectra. Values for the jet transport parameter $\hat q$ at the center of the most central heavy-ion collisions are extracted or calculated within each model, with parameters for the medium properties that are constrained by experimental data on the hadron suppression factor $R_{AA}$. For a quark with initial energy of 10 GeV we find that $\hat q\approx 1.2 \pm 0.3$ GeV$^2$/fm at an initial time $\tau_0=0.6$ fm/$c$ in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV/n and $\hat q\approx 1.9 \pm 0.7 $ GeV$^2$/fm in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76 $ TeV/n. Compared to earlier studies, these represent significant convergence on values of the extracted jet transport parameter, reflecting recent advances in theory and the availability of new experiment data from the LHC.

title: A systemic study of 14 southern infrared dark clouds with N2H+, HNC, HCO+ and HCN lines
abstract: We have studied 14 southern infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) using the data taken from the Millimetre Astronomy Legacy Team 90 GHz (MALT90) survey and the GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL mid-infrared survey of the inner Galaxy. The physical and chemical characteristics of the 14 IRDCs are investigated using N2H+(1-0), HNC(1-0), HCO+(1-0), and HCN(1-0) molecular lines. We find that the 14 IRDCs are in different evolutionary stages from the "starless" to the sources with an UCHII region. Three IRDCs are detected to have the star forming activities. The integrated intensity ratios I(HCO+)/I(HCN), I(N2H+)/I(HCN), and I(HNC)/I(HCN) are all about 1.5, which is different from the previous measurements, suggesting that the integrated intensity ratios may be affected by the cloud environments. The integrated intensities of HNC, HCO+ and HCN show a tight correlation for the 14 IRDCs, implying a close link to the chemical evolution of these three species in the IRDCs. The derived excitation temperature for each IRDC is less than 25 K. We estimate the abundances of the four molecules from 10^(-11) to 10^(-9), and the average abundance ratios N(HNC)/N(HCN) = 1.4+ -0.50, N(HNC)/N(HCO+) = 1.74 + - 0.22, N(HCN)/N(HCO+)= 1.21 + - 0.41.

title: The open cluster NGC 6823 and possible triggered star formation associated with SNR G59.5+0.1
abstract: We investigate the environment in the vicinity of the supernova remnant (SNR) G59.5+0.1 and identify all the young stellar objects (YSOs) around the SNR, to derive the physical properties, obtain insight into the star-formation history, and determine whether SNR G59.5+0.1 can trigger star formation in this region.  We perform the submillimeter/millimeter observations in CO lines toward the southeast of SNR G59.5+0.1 with the KOSMA 3 m Telescope. High values of the integrated CO line-intensity ratio RICO(3−2)/ICO(2−1) is identified as one good signature of the SNR-MC (molecular cloud) interacting system. To investigate the impact of SNR G59.5+0.1 on the process of star formation, we use GLIMPSE I catalog to select YSOs (including Class I and Class II sources).  The CO emission forming an arc-like shape and mid-infrared 8.28 μm emission are coincident with SNR G59.5+0.1, which ‐

title: Azimuthal jet flavor tomography with CUJET2.0 of nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC
abstract: A bstractA perturbative QCD based jet tomographic Monte Carlo model, CUJET2.0, is presented to predict jet quenching observables in relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC/BNL and LHC/CERN energies. This model generalizes the DGLV theory of flavor dependent radiative energy loss by including multi-scale running strong coupling effects. It generalizes CUJET1.0 by computing jet path integrations though more realistic 2 + 1D transverse and longitudinally expanding viscous hydrodynamical fields contrained by fits to low pT flow data. The CUJET2.0 output depends on three control parameters, (αmax, fE, fM ), corresponding to an assumed upper bound on the vacuum running coupling in the infrared and two chromo-electric and magnetic QGP screening mass scales (fEμ(T ), fMμ(T )) where μ(T ) is the 1-loop Debye mass. We compare numerical results as a function of αmax for pure and deformed HTL dynamically enhanced scattering cases corresponding to (fE = 1, 2, fM = 0) to data of the nuclear modification factor, RAAf(pT, ϕ; s,b$$ \sqrt{s}, b $$) for jet fragment flavors f = π, D, B, e at s$$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 0.2 − 2.76 ATeV c.m. energies per nucleon pair and with impact parameter b = 2.4, 7.5 fm. A χ2 analysis is presented and shows that RAAπ data from RHIC and LHC are consistent with CUJET2.0 at the χ2/d.o.f < 2 level for αmax = 0.23 − 0.30. The corresponding q^$$ \widehat{q} $$(Ejet, T )/T3 effective jet transport coefficient field of this model is computed to facilitate comparison to other jet tomographic models in the literature. The predicted elliptic asymmetry, v2(pT ; s$$ \sqrt{s} $$, b) is, however, found to significantly underestimated relative to RHIC and LHC data. We find the χv22$$ {\chi}_{v_2}^2 $$ analysis shows that v2 is very sensitive to allowing even as little as 10% variations of the path averaged αmax along in and out of reaction plane paths.

title: Molecular clumps and star formation associated with the infrared dust bubble N131
abstract: The aim is to explore the interstellar medium around the dust bubble N131 and search for signatures of star formation. 
Methods. We perform a multiwavelength study around the N131 with data taken from large-scale surveys of infrared observation with online archive. We present new observations of three CO J = 1 - 0 isotope variants from Purple Mountain Observatory 13.7 m telescope. We analyze the distribution of the molecular gas and dust in the environment of the N131. We use color-color diagrams to search for young stellar objects and identify exciting star candidates. 
Results. The kinematic distance of about 8.6 kpc has been adopted as the distance of the bubble N131 from the Sun in this work. We have found a ring of clouds in CO emission coincident with the shell of N131 seen in the Spitzer telescope images, and two giant elongated molecular clouds of CO emission appearing on opposite sides of the ringlike shell of N131. There is a cavity within bubble at 1.4 GHz and 24 {\mu}m. Seven IRAS point sources are distributed along the ringlike shell of the bubble N131. 15 exciting stars and 63 YSOs candidates have been found. The clustered class I and II YSOs are distributed along the elongated clouds in the line of sight.