Quantum Monte Carlo calculations for light nuclei with chiral forces

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.