No Arabic abstract
Ab initio theory describes nuclei from a fully microscopic formulation, with no presupposition of collective degrees of freedom, yet signatures of clustering and rotation nonetheless arise. We can therefore look to ab initio theory for an understanding of the nature of these emergent phenomena. To probe the nature of rotation in 10Be, we examine the predicted rotational spectroscopy from no-core configuration interaction (NCCI) calculations with the Daejeon16 internucleon interaction, and find spectra suggestive of coexisting rotational structures having qualitatively different intrinsic deformations: one triaxial and the other with large axial deformation arising primarily from the neutrons.
Structural phenomena in nuclei, from shell structure and clustering to superfluidity and collective rotations and vibrations, reflect emergent degrees of freedom. Ab initio theory describes nuclei directly from a fully microscopic formulation. We can therefore look to ab initio theory as a means of exploring the emergence of effective degrees of freedom in nuclei. For the illustrative case of emergent rotational bands in the Be isotopes, we establish an understanding of the underlying oscillator space and angular momentum (orbital and spin) structure. We consider no-core configuration interaction (NCCI) calculations for 7,9,11Be with the Daejeon16 internucleon interaction. Although shell model or rotational degrees of freedom are not assumed in the ab initio theory, the NCCI results are suggestive of the emergence of effective shell model degrees of freedom (0 hbar-omega and 2 hbar-omega excitations) and LS-scheme rotational degrees of freedom, consistent with an Elliott-Wilsdon SU(3) description. These results provide some basic insight into the connection between emergent effective collective rotational and shell model degrees of freedom in these light nuclei and the underlying ab initio microscopic description.
We propose a new Monte Carlo method called the pinhole trace algorithm for {it ab initio} calculations of the thermodynamics of nuclear systems. For typical simulations of interest, the computational speedup relative to conventional grand-canonical ensemble calculations can be as large as a factor of one thousand. Using a leading-order effective interaction that reproduces the properties of many atomic nuclei and neutron matter to a few percent accuracy, we determine the location of the critical point and the liquid-vapor coexistence line for symmetric nuclear matter with equal numbers of protons and neutrons. We also present the first {it ab initio} study of the density and temperature dependence of nuclear clustering.
Theoretical models of the strong nuclear interaction contain unknown coupling constants (parameters) that must be determined using a pool of calibration data. In cases where the models are complex, leading to time consuming calculations, it is particularly challenging to systematically search the corresponding parameter domain for the best fit to the data. In this paper, we explore the prospect of applying Bayesian optimization to constrain the coupling constants in chiral effective field theory descriptions of the nuclear interaction. We find that Bayesian optimization performs rather well with low-dimensional parameter domains and foresee that it can be particularly useful for optimization of a smaller set of coupling constants. A specific example could be the determination of leading three-nucleon forces using data from finite nuclei or three-nucleon scattering experiments.
The electromagnetic responses obtained from Greens function Monte Carlo (GFMC) calculations are based on realistic treatments of nuclear interactions and currents. The main limitations of this method comes from its nonrelativistic nature and its computational cost, the latter hampering the direct evaluation of the inclusive cross sections as measured by experiments. We extend the applicability of GFMC in the quasielastic region to intermediate momentum transfers by performing the calculations in a reference frame that minimizes nucleon momenta. Additional relativistic effects in the kinematics are accounted for employing the two-fragment model. In addition, we developed a novel algorithm, based on the concept of first-kind scaling, to compute the inclusive electromagnetic cross section of $^4$He through an accurate and reliable interpolation of the response functions. A very good agreement is obtained between theoretical and experimental cross sections for a variety of kinematical setups. This offers a promising prospect for the data analysis of neutrino-oscillation experiments that requires an accurate description of nuclear dynamics in which relativistic effects are fully accounted for.
Background: The nuclear kinetic density is one of many fundamental quantities in density functional theory (DFT) dependent on the nonlocal nuclear density. Often, approximations may be made when computing the density that may result in spurious contributions in other DFT quantities. With the ability to compute the nonlocal nuclear density from ab initio wave functions, it is now possible to estimate effects of such spurious contributions. Purpose: We derive the kinetic density using ab initio nonlocal scalar one-body nuclear densities computed within the no-core shell model (NCSM) approach, utilizing two- and three-nucleon chiral interactions as the sole input. With the ability to compute translationally invariant nonlocal densities, it is possible to directly gauge the impact of the spurious center-of-mass (COM) contributions in DFT quantities such as the kinetic density. Methods: The nonlocal nuclear densities are derived from the NCSM one-body densities calculated in second quantization. We present a review of COM contaminated and translationally invariant nuclear densities. We then derive an analytic expression for the kinetic density using these nonlocal densities, producing an ab initio kinetic density. Results: The ground state nonlocal densities of textsuperscript{4,6,8}He, textsuperscript{12}C, and textsuperscript{16}O are used to compute the kinetic densities of the aforementioned nuclei. The impact of the COM removal technique in the densities is discussed. The results of this work can be extended to other fundamental quantities in DFT. Conclusions: The use of a general nonlocal density allows for the calculation of fundamental quantities taken as input in theories such as DFT. This allows benchmarking of procedures for COM removal in different many-body techniques.