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J. E. Lynn

Publications and source records attributed to J. E. Lynn.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2020

New Ideas in Constraining Nuclear Forces

In recent years, nuclear physics has benefited greatly from the development of powerful ab initio many-body methods and their combination with interactions from chiral effective field theory. With increasing computational power and continuous development of these methods, we are entering an era of precision nuclear physics. Indeed, uncertainties from nuclear Hamiltonians now dominate over uncertainties from many-body methods. This review summarizes the current status of, and future directions in, deriving and constraining nuclear Hamiltonians.

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arXiv2020

Ab initio short-range-correlation scaling factors from light to medium-mass nuclei

High-energy scattering processes, such as deep inelastic scattering (DIS) and quasielastic (QE) scattering provide a wealth of information about the structure of atomic nuclei. The remarkable discovery of the empirical linear relationship between the slope of the European Muon Collaboration (EMC) effect in DIS and the short-range-correlation (SRC) scaling factors $a_2$ in QE kinematics is naturally explained in terms of scale separation in effective field theory. This explanation has powerful consequences, allowing us to calculate and predict SRC scaling factors from ab initio low-energy nuclear theory. We present ab initio calculations of SRC scaling factors for a nucleus $A$ relative to the deuteron $a_2(A/d)$ and relative to $^3\rm He$ $a_2(A/^3\rm He)$ in light and medium-mass nuclei. Our framework further predicts that the EMC effect and SRC scaling factors have minimal or negligible isovector corrections.

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arXiv2019

Exploring New Small System Geometries in Heavy Ion Collisions

Relativistic heavy ion collisions produce nuclei-sized droplets of quark-gluon plasma whose expansion is well described by viscous hydrodynamic calculations. Over the past half decade, this formalism was also found to apply to smaller droplets closer to the size of individual nucleons, as produced in $p$$+$$p$ and $p$$+$$A$ collisions. The hydrodynamic paradigm was further tested with a variety of collision species, including $p$$+$Au, $d$$+$Au, and $^{3}$He$+$Au producing droplets with different geometries. Nevertheless, questions remain regarding the importance of pre-hydrodynamic evolution and the exact medium properties during the hydrodynamic evolution phase, as well as the applicability of alternative theories that argue the agreement with hydrodynamics is accidental. In this work we explore options for new collision geometries including $p$$+$O and O$+$O proposed for running at the Large Hadron Collider, as well as, $^{4}$He$+$Au, C$+$Au, O$+$Au, and $^{7,9}$Be$+$Au at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

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arXiv2019

Quantum Monte Carlo Methods in Nuclear Physics: Recent Advances

In recent years, the combination of precise quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods with realistic nuclear interactions and consistent electroweak currents, in particular those constructed within effective field theories (EFTs), has lead to new insights in light and medium-mass nuclei, neutron matter, and electroweak reactions. This compelling new body of work has been made possible both by advances in QMC methods for nuclear physics, which push the bounds of applicability to heavier nuclei and to asymmetric nuclear matter and by the development of local chiral EFT interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order and minimally nonlocal interactions including $Δ$ degrees of freedom. In this review, we discuss these recent developments and give an overview of the exciting results for nuclei, neutron matter and neutron stars, and electroweak reactions.

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arXiv2018

Signatures of few-body resonances in finite volume

We study systems of bosons and fermions in finite periodic boxes and show how the existence and properties of few-body resonances can be extracted from studying the volume dependence of the calculated energy spectra. Using a plane-wave-based discrete variable representation to conveniently implement periodic boundary conditions, we establish that avoided level crossings occur in the spectra of up to four particles and can be linked to the existence of multi-body resonances. To benchmark our method we use two-body calculations, where resonance properties can be determined with other methods, as well as a three-boson model interaction known to generate a three-boson resonance state. Finding good agreement for these cases, we then predict three-body and four-body resonances for models using a shifted Gaussian potential. Our results establish few-body finite-volume calculations as a new tool to study few-body resonances. In particular, the approach can be used to study few-neutron systems, where such states have been conjectured to exist.

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arXiv2018

Properties of nuclei up to $A=16$ using local chiral interactions

We report accurate quantum Monte Carlo calculations of nuclei up to $A=16$ based on local chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order. We examine the theoretical uncertainties associated with the chiral expansion and the cutoff in the theory, as well as the associated operator choices in the three-nucleon interactions. While in light nuclei the cutoff variation and systematic uncertainties are rather small, in $^{16}$O these can be significant for large coordinate-space cutoffs. Overall, we show that chiral interactions constructed to reproduce properties of very light systems and nucleon-nucleon scattering give an excellent description of binding energies, charge radii, and form factors for all these nuclei, including open-shell systems in $A=6$ and 12.

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arXiv2018

Auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of light and medium-mass nuclei with local chiral interactions

Quantum Monte Carlo methods have recently been employed to study properties of nuclei and infinite matter using local chiral effective field theory interactions. In this work, we present a detailed description of the auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm for nuclei in combination with local chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order. We show results for the binding energy, charge radius, charge form factor, and Coulomb sum rule in nuclei with $3\le A\le16$. Particular attention is devoted to the effect of different operator structures in the three-body force for different cutoffs. The outcomes suggest that local chiral interactions fit to few-body observables give a very good description of the ground-state properties of nuclei up to $^{16}$O, with the exception of one fit for the softer cutoff which predicts overbinding in larger nuclei.

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arXiv2017

Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei with local chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions

Local chiral effective field theory interactions have recently been developed and used in the context of quantum Monte Carlo few- and many-body methods for nuclear physics. In this work, we go over detailed features of local chiral nucleon-nucleon interactions and examine their effect on properties of the deuteron, paying special attention to the perturbativeness of the expansion. We then turn to three-nucleon interactions, focusing on operator ambiguities and their interplay with regulator effects. We then discuss the nuclear Green's function Monte Carlo method, going over both wave-function correlations and approximations for the two- and three-body propagators. Following this, we present a range of results on light nuclei: Binding energies and distribution functions are contrasted and compared, starting from several different microscopic interactions.

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arXiv2017

Analyzing the Fierz Rearrangement Freedom for Local Chiral Two-Nucleon Potentials

Chiral effective field theory is a framework to derive systematic nuclear interactions. It is based on the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics and includes long-range pion physics explicitly, while shorter-range physics is expanded in a general operator basis. The number of low-energy couplings at a particular order in the expansion can be reduced by exploiting the fact that nucleons are fermions and therefore obey the Pauli exclusion principle. The antisymmetry permits the selection of a subset of the allowed contact operators at a given order. When local regulators are used for these short-range interactions, however, this "Fierz rearrangement freedom" is violated. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this violation at leading order (LO) in the chiral expansion. We construct LO and next-to-leading order (NLO) potentials for all possible LO-operator pairs and study their reproduction of phase shifts, the ${}^4$He ground-state energy, and the neutron-matter energy at different densities. We demonstrate that the Fierz rearrangement freedom is partially restored at NLO where subleading contact interactions enter. We also discuss implications for local chiral three-nucleon interactions.

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arXiv2017

Is a Trineutron Resonance Lower in Energy than a Tetraneutron Resonance?

We present quantum Monte Carlo calculations of few-neutron systems confined in external potentials based on local chiral interactions at next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory. The energy and radial densities for these systems are calculated in different external Woods-Saxon potentials. We assume that their extrapolation to zero external-potential depth provides a quantitative estimate of three- and four-neutron resonances. The validity of this assumption is demonstrated by benchmarking with an exact diagonalization in the two-body case. We find that the extrapolated trineutron resonance, as well as the energy for shallow well depths, is lower than the tetraneutron resonance energy. This suggests that a three-neutron resonance exists below a four-neutron resonance in nature and is potentially measurable. To confirm that the relative ordering of three- and four-neutron resonances is not an artifact of the external confinement, we test that the odd-even staggering in the helium isotopic chain is reproduced within this approach. Finally, we discuss similarities between our results and ultracold Fermi gases.

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arXiv2016

Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of two neutrons in finite volume

Ab initio calculations provide direct access to the properties of pure neutron systems that are challenging to study experimentally. In addition to their importance for fundamental physics, their properties are required as input for effective field theories of the strong interaction. In this work, we perform auxiliary-field diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of the ground and first excited state of two neutrons in a finite box, considering a simple contact potential as well as chiral effective field theory interactions. We compare the results against exact diagonalizations and present a detailed analysis of the finite-volume effects, whose understanding is crucial for determining observables from the calculated energies. Using the Lüscher formula, we extract the low-energy S-wave scattering parameters from ground- and excited-state energies for different box sizes.

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arXiv2016

Chiral Three-Nucleon Interactions in Light Nuclei, Neutron-$α$ Scattering, and Neutron Matter

We present quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei, neutron-$α$ scattering, and neutron matter using local two- and three-nucleon ($3N$) interactions derived from chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^2$LO). The two undetermined $3N$ low-energy couplings are fit to the $^4$He binding energy and, for the first time, to the spin-orbit splitting in the neutron-$α$ $P$-wave phase shifts. Furthermore, we investigate different choices of local $3N$-operator structures and find that chiral interactions at N$^2$LO are able to simultaneously reproduce the properties of $A=3,4,5$ systems and of neutron matter, in contrast to commonly used phenomenological $3N$ interactions.

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arXiv2015

Green's Function Monte Carlo Calculations with Two- and Three-Nucleon Interactions from Chiral Effective Field Theory

I discuss our recent work on Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) calculations of light nuclei using local nucleon-nucleon interactions derived from chiral effective field theory (EFT) up to next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^2$LO). I present the natural extension of this work to include the consistent three-nucleon (3N) forces at the same order in the chiral expansion. I discuss our choice of observables to fit the two low-energy constants which enter in the 3N sector at N$^2$LO and present some results for light nuclei.

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arXiv2014

Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of Light Nuclei Using Chiral Potentials

We present the first Green's function Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei with nuclear interactions derived from chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-leading order. Up to this order, the interactions can be constructed in a local form and are therefore amenable to quantum Monte Carlo calculations. We demonstrate a systematic improvement with each order for the binding energies of $A=3$ and $A=4$ systems. We also carry out the first few-body tests to study perturbative expansions of chiral potentials at different orders, finding that higher-order corrections are more perturbative for softer interactions. Our results confirm the necessity of a three-body force for correct reproduction of experimental binding energies and radii, and pave the way for studying few- and many-nucleon systems using quantum Monte Carlo methods with chiral interactions.

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arXiv2012

Real-Space Imaginary-Time Propagators for Non-Local Nucleon-Nucleon Potentials

Nuclear structure quantum Monte Carlo methods such as Green's function or auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo have used phenomenological local real-space potentials containing as few derivatives as possible, such as the Argonne-Urbana family of interactions, to make sampling simple and efficient. Basis set methods such as no-core shell model and coupled-cluster techniques typically use softer non-local potentials because of their more rapid convergence with basis set size. These non-local potentials are usually defined in momentum space and are often based on effective field theory. Comparisons of the results of the two types of methods can be difficult when different potentials are used. We show methods for evaluating the real-space imaginary-time propagators needed to perform quantum Monte Carlo calculations using such non-local potentials. We explore the universality of the large imaginary time propagators for different potentials and discuss how non-local potentials can be used in quantum Monte Carlo calculations.

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