Fast & rigorous constraints on chiral three-nucleon forces from few-body observables


Abstract in English

We explore the constraints on the three-nucleon force (3NF) of chiral effective field theory ($chi$EFT) that are provided by bound-state observables in the $A=3$ and $A=4$ sectors. Our statistically rigorous analysis incorporates experimental error, computational method uncertainty, and the uncertainty due to truncation of the $chi$EFT expansion at next-to-next-to-leading order. A consistent solution for the ${}^3$H binding energy, the ${}^4$He binding energy and radius, and the ${}^3$H $beta$-decay rate can only be obtained if $chi$EFT truncation errors are included in the analysis. All of these except the $beta$-decay rate give essentially degenerate constraints on the 3NF low-energy constants, so it is crucial for estimating these parameters. We use eigenvector continuation for fast and accurate emulation of No-Core Shell Model calculations of the considered few-nucleon observables. This facilitates sampling of the posterior probability distribution, allowing us to also determine the distributions of the hyperparameters that quantify the truncation error. We find a $chi$EFT expansion parameter of $Q=0.33 pm 0.06$ for these observables.

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