Understanding neutrino–nucleus interactions: from revealing nuclear structure to early applications of quantum computing

Understanding how neutrinos interact with atomic nuclei is one of the major challenges in modern particle physics and is essential for the next generation of neutrino oscillation experiments. Although the initial weak interaction is relatively well understood, the resulting excitation evolves within a strongly correlated quantum many-body system before the final particles emerge from the nucleus.

In this colloquium, I will discuss the theoretical challenges of modelling neutrino-nucleus interactions, focusing on recent advances in describing both the initial interaction and the subsequent nuclear dynamics. I will also introduce an emerging interdisciplinary direction that combines nuclear physics with quantum simulation, exploring how ultracold atomic systems may provide new insights into the real-time evolution of nuclear many-body dynamics and help improve the precision of future neutrino experiments.