- Theoretical nuclear physics
- Dynamical evolution of heavy-ion collisions
- Strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions
- Relativistic hydrodynamics and transport theory
- Open research software and data management
- High-level team work
Contact Information
Prof. Dr. Hannah Elfner (née Petersen)
Head of Department Hot and Dense QCD Matter
Coordinator of Theory Pillar
GSI, KBW, room 2.14
phone: +49 6159 71 3068, email: h.elfner@gsi.de
Professor for Theoretical Physics, Goethe University
GSC, room 3|29
phone: +49 69 798 47652, email: elfner@itp.uni-frankfurt.de
Important Steps
Awards and Prizes
The JETSCAPE collaboration develops within the XSCAPE project running from 2020-2025 a general framework to model the evolution of different system sizes from e+e-, pp, pA to AA and at high to low beam energies. We are involved with the application of the hadronic transport approach SMASH to all non-equilibirum stages with hadronic degrees of freedom.
The CRC-TR-211 "Strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions" running since 2017 is a collaboration between the universities in Frankfurt, Darmstadt and Bielefeld. We are involved in the project B02 "Collective dynamics in nuclear collisions", B03 "Spin-magnetohydrodynamics" as well as Z02 "Software development center". In particular the data management policy is adapted also for all other projects within the group.
The consortium PUNCH4NFDI started in October 2021 and represents Astrophysics, Astroparticle physics, Hadron, Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics within the effort to build a national research data infrastructure (NFDI). We are contributing with our software development efforts within the Z02 project of CRC-TR-211.
The Strong 2020 program contains a European network NA7-Hf-QGP to establish improved means for experiment-theory comparison in heavy-ion collisions. The focus is on charm physics and the idea is to use HEPMC with RIVET analysis to compare theoretical calculations to experimental data on HEPDATA. The project has been running from June 2019 until July 2024.
Within the cluster initiative ELEMENTS the group investigates the equation of state of dense nuclear matter and how this is constrained from heavy-ion collisions. There are more than 20 project leaders from Frankfurt, Darmstadt, GSI and Gießen involved to explore the universe from microscopic to macroscopic scales. The project has been running from April 2021 until March 2025 and funded one PhD position.
The SinoGerman project "Exploring the QCD phase transition in relativistic heavy-ion collisions with fluctuations of conserved charges and machine learning" is a collaboration between the experimental groups of Prof. Blume (CBM and HADES) at Goethe University and Prof. Luo (STAR) as well as the theory groups of Prof. Wang and Prof. Pang at Central China Normal University Wuhan. The project has been running from end of 2019 until beginning of 2023 and funded one PhD position.
The DAAD PPP project "Photons and transport coefficients in heavy-ion collisions" has provided the group with travel funds for extended visits of PhD students, postdocs and the PI to visit McGill University in Montreal, Canada and collaborate on related questions. This project has been running from January 2017 until December 2018.
The Helmholtz Young Investigator Group "Dynamical Description of Heavy-Ion Reactions" has provided the base funding for the reesearch group and enabled the development of the SMASH (Simulating Many Accelerated Strongly-nteracting Hadrons) transport code. It has been running from October 2012 until December 2018 with a total amount of 1.25 million EUR.