Chiral Effective Field Theory's Impact on Advancing Quantum Monte Carlo Methods

Abstract

Thirty years ago, Steven Weinberg published his seminal paper on "Nuclear Forces from chiral Lagrangians" [1] which has revolutionized the field of theoretical nuclear physics. Nowadays, interactions derived from chiral effective field theory are routinely used to describe nuclear systems ranging from atomic nuclei to the dense matter explored in the core of neutron stars with theoretical uncertainty estimates. In our contribution to the special issue "Celebrating 30 years of the Steven Weinberg's paper Nuclear Forces from Chiral Lagrangians", we focus on the impact that chiral effective field theory interactions have played in advancing microscopic studies of atomic nuclei and the nuclearmatter equation of state using quantum Monte Carlo methods.Keywords chiral effective field theory • quantum Monte Carlo • nuclear structure • nuclear dynamics • nuclear equation of state

What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

“…As one moves to heavier nuclei, it is however no surprise that interactions between "free" nucleons and pions become less efficient degrees of freedom. The bridge to descriptions which utilise more collective degrees of freedoms, like shell-and-core or quasi-particles, is one we have now started to explore with more confidence [36][37][38][39]; cf. discussion in sect.…”

“…At p typ ∼ m π , high-accuracy χEFT interactions with a perturbative Delta dramatically impact nuclear structure and nuclear matter [36][37][38][39]. But for p typ ∼ ∆ M , a typical scale if not in finite nuclei, then in neutron stars, the Delta dominates over pion-exchange and cannot be treated perturbatively.…”