The search for an understanding of fundamental particle physics that goes beyond the Standard Model (SM) has grown into a worldwide titanic effort. Low-energy precision experiments are complementary to collider searches and, in certain cases, can even probe higher energy scales directly. However, the interpretation of a potential signal, or lack thereof, is complicated because of the non-perturbative nature of low-energy QCD. I will use the search for electric dipole moments (EDMs), which aims to discover beyond-the-SM CP violation, as an example to illustrate these difficulties and how they can be overcome by combining (chiral) effective field theory and lattice QCD. I discuss how EDM experiments involving complex systems like nucleons, nuclei, atoms, and molecules constrain possible CP-violating interactions involving the Higgs boson, how these constraints match up to direct LHC searches, and the relevance of and strategies for the improvement of the hadronic and nuclear theory.

Collisions between two large nuclear at collider energies produce extremely high temperature QCD matter which is best described as consisting of deconfined quarks and gluons. A powerful tool to understand this matter is to use the high momentum quarks and gluons generated in hard scattering processes in the earliest stages of the nuclear collision as probes of the matter at later times. These measurements use modifications to the jet rates and properties induced by the scattering of the probes off the constituents of the matter to infer the nature of the interactions and constrain the properties of the matter. This talk will describe recent jet measurements in lead-lead collisions at 5.02 TeV collision energy using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The prospects for making these measurements at lower collision energy, and thus lower temperature QCD matter, using the sPHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider will also be discussed. Together measurements at these two facilities provide a unique opportunity to understand high temperature QCD.

The mission of the DOE/NNSA Office of Emergency Response is to provide a versatile, capable, worldwide nuclear or radiological response with the technical capability to respond to any radiological/nuclear incident worldwide. Scientists at the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) play an important role in this mission, serving on a variety of response teams. An overview of various radiological emergency-response assets will be given, with a primary focus on the expertise of RSL. Current capabilities and operational challenges in the topic areas of both crisis response (radiological search, identification, characterization, etc.) and consequence management (response to and mitigation of incidents) will be discussed. A wide range of radiation-detection platforms, including backpacks, vehicle-mounted systems, and aircraft-mounted systems will also be presented.

Neutron star mergers are promising candidates for the observation of an electromagnetic (EM) signal coincident with gravitational waves. The recent observation of GW170817 [1] appears to be such an event, with gravitational waves confirmed by subsequent EM signals ranging from the infrared to x-ray portions of the spectrum. The properties of the ejecta produced during these events are predicted to play an important role in the electromagnetic transients called macronovae or kilonovae. Characteristics of the ejecta include large velocity gradients and the presence of heavy r-process elements, which pose significant challenges to the accurate calculation of radiative opacities and radiation transport. For example, these opacities include a dense forest of bound-bound features arising from near-neutral lanthanide and actinide elements. We use the Los Alamos suite of atomic physics and plasma modeling codes [2] to investigate the use of detailed, fine-structure opacities [3] to model the EM emission from macronovae. Our simulations [4] predict emission in a range of EM bands, depending on issues such as the presence of winds, elemental composition, and viewing angle. This talk emphasizes various atomic-physics aspects of the spectral modeling of neutron star mergers.

Despite its success, the Standard Model (SM) is currently being scrutinized at the energy, intensity and precision frontier. One probing mechanism for new physics is the unitarity test of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. This test requires a precise and accurate determination of the Vud matrix element, which is currently derived from the ft-value of superallowed weak decays. While superallowed pure Fermi transitions currently allow for the most precise determination of Vud, there is currently a growing interest in obtaining that matrix element from superallowed mixed transitions to test the accuracy of Vud and the calculation of isospin symmetry breaking corrections. In the past few years a research program aimed at solidifying the determination of Vud from mirror transitions was initiated using radioactive ion beams from the Twin Solenoid (TwinSol) separator at the Nuclear Science Laboratory of the University Notre Dame. The first part of the program is centered on precision half-life measurements and the second part aims at measuring the Fermi to Gamow-Teller mixing ratio ρ. Recent half-life measurements and the current development status of an ion trapping system to measure ρ in many mirror decays for the first time will be presented.