T-2, Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Quantum Monte Carlo calculations for light nuclei with chiral forces

Joel Lynn
LANL

Nuclear structure is an important area of research because it probes nuclear Hamiltonians, which leads to a better understanding of the strong force at low energies. In this talk, I present the first Green's function Monte Carlo calculations for light nuclei with nuclear interactions derived from chiral effective field theory (chiral EFT) up to next-to-next-to-leading order. Up to this order, the interactions can be constructed in local form and are therefore amenable to quantum Monte Carlo calculations. I will demonstrate a systematic improvement with each order in the theoretical uncertainty for the binding energies of A=3 and A=4 systems. I also discuss the first non-perturbative few-body tests of the different orders in the chiral EFT expansion, finding the lower-cutoff potentials to be perturbative. The results confirm the necessity of a three-body force for correct reproduction of experimental binding energies and radii and pave the way for detailed studies of systematic theoretical uncertainties in few- and many-nucleon systems.

NNSA


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