Ab Initio Calculations of Nuclear Structure and Elastic Scattering Observables
Prof. Pieter Maris
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Iowa State University
In recent year there has been significant progress in computational approaches to nuclear structure, with advances in many-body techniques, realistic interactions based on QCD, ever-increasing computing power, and Bayesian methods to estimate uncertainties. State-of-the-art two- and three-nucleon interactions obtained from chiral effective field theory (EFT) provide a theoretical foundation for nuclear theory with (in principle) controlled approximations and quantifiable uncertainties. With highly efficient numerical codes, tuned to the current generation of supercomputers, we can perform ab-initio nuclear structure calculations for a range of light nuclei to a remarkable level of numerical accuracy.
I present recent No-Core Configuration Interaction calculations of ground state energies and low-lying excitation spectra of all stable p-shell nuclei based on chiral EFT interactions. I also show how the obtained nuclear wavefunctions and densities can be used to calculate other observables such as charge radii, magnetic and quadrupole moments, electromagnetic transitions, and nucleon-nucleus scattering. Finally, I show that machine-learning approaches can be used to obtain realistic estimates of the numerical uncertainties of the obtained energies, radii, and other observables. The interaction uncertainties can be estimated from order-by-order calculations in the chiral EFT expansion.
Hosted by Prof. Caprio
Time Zone: ET
Zoom link: https://notredame.zoom.us/j/98477543171