No Arabic abstract
We show that microscopic calculations based on chiral effective field theory interactions constrain the properties of neutron-rich matter below nuclear densities to a much higher degree than is reflected in commonly used equations of state. Combined with observed neutron star masses, our results lead to a radius R = 9.7 - 13.9 km for a 1.4 M_{solar} star, where the theoretical range is due, in about equal amounts, to uncertainties in many-body forces and to the extrapolation to high densities.
We investigate the existence of bound $Xi$ break states in systems with $A=4-7$ baryons using the Jacobi NCSM approach in combination with chiral NN and $Xi$N interactions. We find three shallow bound states for the NNN$Xi$ system (with $(J^pi,T)=(1^+,0)$, $(0^+,1)$ and $(1^+,1)$) with quite similar binding energies. The $^5_{Xi}mathrm{H}(frac{1}{2}^+,frac{1}{2})$ and $^7_{Xi}mathrm{H}(frac{1}{2}^+,frac{3}{2})$ hypernuclei are also clearly bound with respect to the thresholds $^4mathrm{He} + Xi$ and $^6mathrm{He} +Xi$, respectively. The binding of all these $Xi$ systems is predominantly due to the attraction of the chiral $Xi$N potential in the $^{33}S_1$ channel. A perturbative estimation suggests that the decay widths of all the observed states could be rather small.
We present variational Monte Carlo calculations of the neutron matter equation of state using chiral nuclear forces. The ground-state wavefunction of neutron matter, containing non-perturbative many-body correlations, is obtained from auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo simulations of up to about 340 neutrons interacting on a 10^3 discretized lattice. The evolution Hamiltonian is chosen to be attractive and spin-independent in order to avoid the fermion sign problem and is constructed to best reproduce broad features of the chiral nuclear force. This is facilitated by choosing a lattice spacing of 1.5 fm, corresponding to a momentum-space cutoff of Lambda = 414 MeV/c, a resolution scale at which strongly repulsive features of nuclear two-body forces are suppressed. Differences between the evolution potential and the full chiral nuclear interaction (Entem and Machleidt Lambda = 414 MeV) are then treated perturbatively. Our results for the equation of state are compared to previous quantum Monte Carlo simulations which employed chiral two-body forces at next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO). In addition we include the effects of three-body forces at N2LO, which provide important repulsion at densities higher than 0.02 fm^-3, as well as two-body forces at N3LO.
We compute the $S$-factor of the proton-proton ($pp$) fusion reaction using chiral effective field theory ($chi$EFT) up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) and perform a rigorous uncertainty analysis of the results. We quantify the uncertainties due to (i) the computational method used to compute the $pp$ cross section in momentum space, (ii) the statistical uncertainties in the low-energy coupling constants of $chi$EFT, (iii) the systematic uncertainty due to the $chi$EFT cutoff, and (iv) systematic variations in the database used to calibrate the nucleon-nucleon interaction. We also examine the robustness of the polynomial extrapolation procedure, which is commonly used to extract the threshold $S$-factor and its energy-derivatives. By performing a statistical analysis of the polynomial fit of the energy-dependent $S$-factor at several different energy intervals, we eliminate a systematic uncertainty that can arise from the choice of the fit interval in our calculations. In addition, we explore the statistical correlations between the $S$-factor and few-nucleon observables such as the binding energies and point-proton radii of $^{2,3}$H and $^3$He as well as the $D$-state probability and quadrupole moment of $^2$H, and the $beta$-decay of $^{3}$H. We find that, with the state-of-the-art optimization of the nuclear Hamiltonian, the statistical uncertainty in the threshold $S$-factor cannot be reduced beyond 0.7%.
Precise and reliable measurements of the masses and radii of neutron stars with a variety of masses would provide valuable guidance for improving models of the properties of cold matter with densities above the saturation density of nuclear matter. Several different approaches for measuring the masses and radii of neutron stars have been tried or proposed, including analyzing the X-ray fluxes and spectra of the emission from neutron stars in quiescent low-mass X-ray binary systems and thermonuclear burst sources; fitting the energy-dependent X-ray waveforms of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars, burst oscillations with millisecond periods, and accretion-powered millisecond pulsars; and modeling the gravitational radiation waveforms of coalescing double neutron star and neutron star -- black hole binary systems. We describe the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, most of which currently have substantial systematic errors, and discuss the prospects for decreasing the systematic errors in each method.
Since the pioneering work of Weinberg, Chiral Effective Field Theory ($chi$EFT) has been widely and successfully utilized in nuclear physics to study many-nucleon interactions and associated electroweak currents. Nuclear $chi$EFT has now developed into an intense field of research and is applied to study light to medium mass nuclei. In this contribution, we focus on the development of electroweak currents from $chi$EFT and present applications to selected nuclear electroweak observables.