Ab initio calculations of the isotopic dependence of nuclear clustering

Nuclear clustering describes the appearance of structures resembling smaller nuclei such as alpha particles (4He nuclei) within the interior of a larger nucleus. While clustering is important for several well-known examples, much remains to be discovered about the general nature of clustering in nuclei. In this letter we present lattice Monte Carlo calculations based on chiral effective field theory for the ground states of helium, beryllium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes. By computing model-independent measures that probe three- and four-nucleon correlations at short distances, we determine the shape of the alpha clusters and the entanglement of nucleons comprising each alpha cluster with the outside medium. We also introduce a new computational approach called the pinhole algorithm, which solves a long-standing deficiency of auxiliary-field Monte Carlo simulations in computing density correlations relative to the center of mass. We use the pinhole algorithm to determine the proton and neutron density distributions and the geometry of cluster correlations in 12C, 14C, and 16C. The structural similarities among the carbon isotopes suggest that 14C and 16C have excitations analogous to the well-known Hoyle state resonance in 12C.

Effective forces between quantum bound states

Recent ab initio lattice studies have found that the interactions between alpha particles (4He nuclei) are sensitive to seemingly minor details of the nucleon-nucleon force such as interaction locality. In order to uncover the essential physics of this puzzling phenomenon without unnecessary complications, we study a simple model involving two-component fermions in one spatial dimension. We probe the interaction between two bound dimers for several different particle-particle interactions and measure an effective potential between the dimers using external point potentials which act as numerical tweezers. We find that the strength and range of the local part of the particle-particle interactions play a dominant role in shaping the interactions between the dimers and can even determine the overall sign of the effective potential.