arXiv subjects

Alexander Tichai

Publications and source records attributed to Alexander Tichai.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

High-precision ab initio calculations of nuclear binding energies: Tin isotopes from dripline to dripline

The location of the neutron drip line in tin isotopes has important consequences for our fundamental understanding of nuclear structure and nuclear forces as well as for astrophysical nucleosynthesis. Performing high-precision ab initio calculations of even-even tin isotopes from $N=50$ to $N=126$ based on chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions, the predicted drip-line location is found to be highly sensitive to the employed nuclear interactions and to exhibit tension with recent energy-density-functional predictions. On the neutron-deficient side, results are consistent with extrapolated two-neutron separation energies constrained by recent Penning-trap mass measurements.

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arXiv2026

High-order perturbative calculations of nuclear ground states: Automated evaluation of many-body diagrams

We advance the many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) calculations of the ground-state energy and radius of closed-shell nuclei beyond third order. Using automated diagram generation and evaluation up to fifth order, we present ground-state properties of selected closed-shell nuclei up to $^{78}$Ni with two- and three-nucleon interactions derived from chiral effective field theory. A clear convergence trend is observed for the ground-state energy enabling calculations at improved accuracy. We further investigate in detail the decomposition of the fourth-order contributions. For the ground-state energy, the magnitude of the fourth-order contribution is typically less than half of the third order, and a typical cancellation among different classes of diagrams is observed. Finally, we perform a comprehensive comparison between MBPT and non-perturbative in-medium similarity renormalization group (IMSRG) calculations, with the goal to provide insight into many-body uncertainties associated with the IMSRG(2) truncation.

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arXiv2026

Ab initio calculations of nuclear charge radii across and beyond ${}^{132}$Sn: Putting chiral EFT nuclear interactions to the test

Charge radii are investigated along the Tin isotopic chain via ab initio Bogoliubov coupled cluster calculations at the singles and doubles level. In addition to the reproduction of absolute radii, the parabolic behavior of isotopic shifts between the N = 50 and N = 82 magic numbers and the kink through ${}^{132}$Sn are shown to provide stringent tests for state-of-the-art chiral effective field theory ($\chi$EFT) inter-nucleon interactions. Indeed, none of the employed fine-tuned interactions can capture all such key characteristics. Eventually, the pronounced sensitivity of the results to the employed Hamiltonian beyond ${}^{132}$Sn provides a unique playground to pin down critical attributes of $\chi$EFT inter-nucleon interactions in the future. This calls for measuring isotopic shifts both towards ${}^{100}$Sn and beyond ${}^{134}$Sn, as well as for performing high-accuracy ab initio calculations of mean-square radii in heavy open-shell nuclei by adding both triples corrections to the many-body wave function and the two-body charge density correction to the operator

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arXiv2025

Ab initio calculations of monopole sum rules: From finite nuclei to infinite nuclear matter

We compute moments of the isoscalar monopole response of N = Z closed-shell nuclei based on chiral nucleon-nucleon plus three-nucleon interactions. We employ the random phase approximation (RPA) and two ab initio many-body approaches, the in-medium similarity renormalization group (IMSRG) and coupled-cluster theory (CC). In the IMSRG framework, the moments are obtained as ground-state expectation values, whereas in the CC approach, they are evaluated through excited-state calculations. We find good agreement between the IMSRG and CC results across all nuclei studied. RPA provides a reasonable approximation to the correlated methods if the interaction is soft. From the calculated moments, we extract average energies of the monopole response, compute finite-nucleus incompressibilities, and estimate the incompressibility of symmetric nuclear matter by a fit to a leptodermous expansion. Our extrapolated values are lower than those obtained in nuclear matter calculations with the same interactions, but the values are consistent with phenomenological ranges.

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arXiv2025

Hartree-Fock emulators for nuclei: Application to charge radii of $^{48,52}$Ca

Understanding the emergence of complex structures of nuclei from chiral effective field theory (EFT) is a central challenge. The large number of low-energy couplings (LECs) in the EFT expansion and the significant cost of $\textit{ab initio}$ many-body calculations render large-scale sensitivity studies of many-body observables computationally prohibitive, necessitating the use of emulators as low-cost surrogates. In this work, we study a Hartree-Fock emulator based on eigenvector continuation to investigate trends in nuclear charge radii of neutron-rich calcium isotopes. We systematically vary the five LECs entering the leading three-nucleon (3N) interactions, and demonstrate the precision of the emulator through cross-validation over a wide parameter space. Our findings indicate that large charge radius increase from $^{48}$Ca to $^{52}$Ca is likely not explained by variations of the leading 3N couplings. This suggests that other effects, such as sensitivities to chiral two-nucleon interactions or neglected many-body effects, e.g., associated with nuclear collectivity, play an important role.

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arXiv2025

Impact of ground-state correlations on the multipole response of nuclei: Ab initio calculations of moment operators

We develop a framework that allows to calculate integrated properties of the nuclear response from first principles. Using the ab initio in-medium similarity renormalization group (IMSRG), we calculate the expectation values of moment operators that are linked to the multipole response of nuclei. This approach is applied to the isoscalar mono- and quadrupole as well as the isovector dipole response of closed-shell nuclei from $^4$He to $^{78}$Ni for different chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions. We find that the inclusion of many-body correlations in the nuclear ground state significantly impacts the multipole response when going from the random-phase approximation to the IMSRG level. Our IMSRG calculations lead to an improved description of experimental data in $^{16}$O and $^{40}$Ca, including a good reproduction of the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn enhancement factor. These findings highlight the utility of the moment method as a benchmark for other ab initio approaches that describe nuclear response functions through the explicit treatment of excited states.

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arXiv2025

Bayesian approach for many-body uncertainties in nuclear structure: Many-body perturbation theory for finite nuclei

A comprehensive assessment of theoretical uncertainties defines an important frontier in nuclear structure research. Ideally, theory predictions include uncertainty estimates that take into account truncation effects from both the interactions and the many-body expansion. While the uncertainties from the expansion of the interactions within effective field theories have been studied systematically using Bayesian methods, many-body truncations are usually addressed by expert assessment. In this work we use a Bayesian framework to study many-body uncertainties within many-body perturbation theory applied to finite nuclei. Our framework is applied to a broad range of nuclei across the nuclear chart calculated from two- and three-nucleon interactions based on chiral effective field theory. These developments represent a step towards a more complete and systematic quantification of uncertainties in \emph{ab initio} calculations of nuclei.

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arXiv2025

Revealing the harmonic structure of nuclear two-body correlations in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

Smashing nuclei at ultrarelativistic speeds and analyzing the momentum distribution of outgoing debris provides a powerful method to probe the many-body properties of the incoming nuclear ground states. Within a perturbative description of initial-state fluctuations in the quark-gluon plasma, we express the measurement of anisotropic flow in ultra-central heavy-ion collisions as the quantum-mechanical average of a specific set of operators measuring the harmonic structure of the two-body azimuthal correlations among nucleons in the colliding states. These observables shed a new light on spatial correlations in atomic nuclei, while enabling us to test the complementary pictures of nuclear structure delivered by low- and high-energy experiments on the basis of state-of-the-art theoretical approaches rooted in quantum chromodynamics.

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arXiv2024

Recent advances in coupled cluster computations of open-shell atomic nuclei

In this contribution, we report on recent progress in coupled-cluster simulations of open-shell atomic nuclei using interactions consistently derived from chiral effective field theory. In particular, we compare different coupled-cluster approaches by computing binding energies and electric dipole polarizabilities in medium-mass calcium isotopes.

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arXiv2024

Ab initio Bogoliubov many-body perturbation theory: closed-form constraint on the average particle number

Bogoliubov many-body perturbation theory (BMBPT) relying on the breaking of U(1) global gauge symmetry has been recently formulated and applied to extend the applicability of standard perturbation theory to ab initio calculations of atomic nuclei away from shell closures. So far, practical applications have been limited to second-order calculations due to the lack of a generic algorithm to constrain the average particle number of the symmetry-broken state. This limitation is presently lifted and a general BMBPT formalism is presented that allows to constrain the particle-number expectation value at arbitrary order P. The constraint can be incorporated in closed form by solving a polynomial equation of degree P-1. The numerical procedure is illustrated through BMBPT(3) calculations of calcium isotopes using a nuclear Hamiltonian derived within chiral effective field theory.

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arXiv2024

Impact of correlations on nuclear binding energies

A strong effort will be dedicated in the coming years to extend the reach of ab initio nuclear-structure calculations to heavy doubly open-shell nuclei. In order to do so, the most efficient strategies to incorporate dominant many-body correlations at play in such nuclei must be identified. With this motivation in mind, the present work pedagogically analyses the inclusion of many-body correlations and their impact on binding energies of Calcium and Chromium isotopes. Employing an empirically-optimal Hamiltonian built from chiral effective field theory, binding energies along both isotopic chains are studied via a hierarchy of approximations based on polynomially-scaling expansion many-body methods. The corresponding results are compared to experimental data and to those obtained via valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group calculations at the normal-ordered two-body level that act as a reference in the present study. The spherical mean-field approximation is shown to display specific shortcomings in Ca isotopes that can be understood analytically and that are efficiently corrected via the consistent addition of low-order dynamical correlations on top of it. While the same setting cannot appropriately reproduce binding energies in doubly open-shell Cr isotopes, allowing the unperturbed mean-field state to break rotational symmetry permits to efficiently capture the static correlations responsible for the phenomenological differences observed between the two isotopic chains. Eventually, the present work demonstrates in a pedagogical way that polynomially-scaling expansion methods based on unperturbed states that possibly break (and restore) symmetries constitute an optimal route to extend ab initio calculations to heavy closed- and open-shell nuclei.

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arXiv2023

Eigenvector continuation for the pairing Hamiltonian

The development of emulators for the evaluation of many-body observables has gained increasing attention over the last years. In particular the framework of eigenvector continuation (EC) has been identified as a powerful tool when the Hamiltonian admits for a parametric dependence. By training the emulator on a set of training data the many-body solution for arbitrary parameter values can be robustly predicted in many cases. Furthermore, it can be used to resum perturbative expansions that otherwise diverge. In this work, we apply EC to the pairing Hamiltonian and show that EC-resummed perturbation theory is in qualitative agreement with the exact solution and that EC-based emulators robustly predict the ground-state energy once the training data are chosen appropriately. In particular the phase transition from the normal to the superfluid regime is quantitatively predicted using a very low number of training points.

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arXiv2022

Excited states from eigenvector continuation: the anharmonic oscillator

Eigenvector continuation (EC) has recently attracted a lot attention in nuclear structure and reactions as a variational resummation tool for many-body expansions. While previous applications focused on ground-state energies, excited states can be accessed on equal footing. This work is dedicated to a detailed understanding of the emergence of excited states from the eigenvector continuation approach. For numerical applications the one-dimensional quartic anharmonic oscillator is investigated, which represents a strongly non-perturbative quantum system where the use of standard perturbation techniques break down. We discuss how different choices for the construction of the EC manifold affect the quality of the EC resummation and investigate in detail the results from EC for excited states compared to results from a full diagonalization as a function of the basis-space size.

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arXiv2022

Nuclear Forces for Precision Nuclear Physics -- a collection of perspectives

This is a collection of perspective pieces contributed by the participants of the Institute of Nuclear Theory's Program on Nuclear Physics for Precision Nuclear Physics which was held virtually from April 19 to May 7, 2021. The collection represents the reflections of a vibrant and engaged community of researchers on the status of theoretical research in low-energy nuclear physics, the challenges ahead, and new ideas and strategies to make progress in nuclear structure and reaction physics, effective field theory, lattice QCD, quantum information, and quantum computing. The contributed pieces solely reflect the perspectives of the respective authors and do not represent the viewpoints of the Institute for Nuclear theory or the organizers of the program.

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arXiv2021

Importance truncation in non-perturbative many-body techniques

Expansion many-body methods correspond to solving complex tensor networks. The (iterative) solving of the network and the (repeated) storage of the unknown tensors requires a computing power growing polynomially with the size of basis of the one-body Hilbert space one is working with. Thanks to current computer capabilities, ab initio calculations of nuclei up to mass $A\sim100$ delivering a few percent accuracy are routinely feasible today. However, the runtime and memory costs become quickly prohibitive as one attempts (possibly at the same time) (i) to reach out to heavier nuclei, (ii) to employ symmetry-breaking reference states to access open-shell nuclei and (iii) to aim for yet a greater accuracy. The challenge is particularly exacerbated for non-perturbative methods involving the repeated storage of (high-rank) tensors obtained via iterative solutions of non-linear equations. The present work addresses the formal and numerical implementations of so-called importance truncation (IT) techniques within the frame of one particular non-perturbative expansion method, i.e., Gorkov Self-Consistent Green's Function (GSCGF) theory, with the goal to eventually overcome above-mentioned limitations. By a priori truncating irrelevant tensor entries, IT techniques are shown to reduce the storage to less than 1% of its original cost in realistic GSCGF calculations performed at the ADC(2) level while maintaining a 1% accuracy on the correlation energy. The future steps will be to extend the present development to the next, e.g., ADC(3), truncation level and to SCGF calculations applicable to doubly open-shell nuclei.

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arXiv2020

Bogoliubov many-body perturbation theory under constraint

In order to solve the A-body Schrödinger equation both accurately and efficiently for open-shell nuclei, a novel many-body method coined as Bogoliubov many-body perturbation theory (BMBPT) was recently formalized and applied at low orders. Based on the breaking of U(1) symmetry associated with particle-number conservation, this perturbation theory must operate under the constraint that the average number of particles is self-consistently adjusted at each perturbative order. The corresponding formalism is presently detailed with the goal to characterize the behavior of the associated Taylor series. BMBPT is, thus, investigated numerically up to high orders at the price of restricting oneself to a small, i.e. schematic, portion of Fock space. While low-order results only differ by 2 - 3 % from those obtained via a configuration interaction (CI) diagonalization, the series is shown to eventually diverge. The application of a novel resummation method coined as eigenvector continuation further increase the accuracy when built from low-order BMBPT corrections and quickly converges towards the CI result when applied at higher orders. Furthermore, the numerically-costly self-consistent particle number adjustment procedure is shown to be safely bypassed via the use of a computationally cheap a posteriori correction method. Eventually, the present work validates the fact that low order BMBPT calculations based on an a posteriori (average) particle number correction deliver controlled results and demonstrates that they can be optimally complemented by the eigenvector continuation method to provide results with sub-percent accuracy. This approach is, thus, planned to become a workhorse for realistic ab initio calculations of open-shell nuclei in the near future.

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arXiv2020

Symmetry reduction of tensor networks in many-body theory I. Automated symbolic evaluation of $SU(2)$ algebra

The ongoing progress in (nuclear) many-body theory is accompanied by an ever-rising increase in complexity of the underlying formalisms used to solve the stationary Schrödinger equation. The associated working equations at play in state-of-the-art ab initio nuclear many-body methods can be analytically reduced with respect to angular-momentum, i.e. $SU(2)$, quantum numbers whenever they are effectively employed in a symmetry-restricted context. The corresponding procedure constitutes a tedious and error-prone but yet an integral part of the implementation of those many-body frameworks. Indeed, this symmetry reduction is a key step to advance modern simulations to higher accuracy since the use of symmetry-adapted tensors can decrease the computational complexity by orders of magnitude. While attempts have been made in the past to automate the (anti-) commutation rules linked to Fermionic and Bosonic algebras at play in the derivation of the working equations, there is no systematic account to achieve the same goal for their symmetry reduction. In this work, the first version of an automated tool performing graph-theory-based angular-momentum reduction is presented. Taking the symmetry-unrestricted expressions of a generic tensor network as an input, the code provides their angular-momentum-reduced form in an error-safe way in a matter of seconds. Several state-of-the-art many-body methods serve as examples to demonstrate the generality of the approach and to highlight the potential impact on the many-body community.

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arXiv2020

Many-body perturbation theories for finite nuclei

In recent years many-body perturbation theory encountered a renaissance in the field of ab initio nuclear structure theory. In various applications it was shown that perturbation theory, including novel flavors of it, constitutes a useful tool to describe atomic nuclei, either as a full-fledged many-body approach or as an auxiliary method to support more sophisticated non-perturbative many-body schemes. In this work the current status of many-body perturbation theory in the field of nuclear structure is discussed and novel results are provided that highlight its power as a efficient and yet accurate (pre-processing) approach to systematically investigate medium-mass nuclei. Eventually a new generation of chiral nuclear Hamiltonians is benchmarked using several state-of-the-art flavours of many-body perturbation theory.

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