Essential elements for nuclear binding

Journal Article · 01 October 2019 · Physics Letters. B

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2019.134863 · OSTI ID:1557875

Lu, Bing-Nan ^[1]; Li, Ning ^[1]; Elhatisari, Serdar  ^[2]; Lee, Dean  ^[1]; Epelbaum, Evgeny ^[3]; Meißner, Ulf-G.  ^[4]

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1. Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy. Facility for Rare Isotope Beams
2. Univ. of Bonn (Germany). Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics. Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik; Karamanoglu Mehmetbey Univ., Karaman (Turkey). Faculty of Engineering
3. Ruhr Univ., Bochum (Germany). Institute for Theoretical Physics II. Faculty of Physics and Astronomy
4. Univ. of Bonn (Germany). Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics. Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik; Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany). Jülich Center for Hadron Physics. Institut für Kernphysik. Inst. for Advanced Simulation; Tbilisi State Univ., Tbilisi (Georgia)

How does nuclear binding emerge from first principles? Our current best understanding of nuclear forces is based on a systematic low-energy expansion called chiral effective field theory. However, recent ab initio calculations of nuclear structure have found that not all chiral effective field theory interactions give accurate predictions with increasing nuclear density. In this letter we address the reason for this problem and the first steps toward a solution. Using nuclear lattice simulations, we deduce the minimal nuclear interaction that can reproduce the ground state properties of light nuclei, medium-mass nuclei, and neutron matter simultaneously with no more than a few percent error in the energies and charge radii. We find that only four parameters are needed. With these four parameters one can accurately describe neutron matter up to saturation density and the ground state properties of nuclei up to calcium. Given the absence of sign oscillations in these lattice Monte Carlo simulations and the mild scaling of computational effort scaling with nucleon number, this work provides a pathway to high-quality simulations in the future with as many as one or two hundred nucleons.

• Research Organization: Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0018638; AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1557875
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1803440
• Journal Information: Physics Letters. B, Vol. 797, Issue C; ISSN 0370-2693
• Publisher: ElsevierCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English