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T. Papenbrock

Publications and source records attributed to T. Papenbrock.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
arXiv2015

Effective field theory for nuclear vibrations with quantified uncertainties

We develop an effective field theory (EFT) for nuclear vibrations. The key ingredients - quadrupole degrees of freedom, rotational invariance, and a breakdown scale around the three-phonon level - are taken from data. The EFT is developed for spectra and electromagnetic moments and transitions. We employ tools from Bayesian statistics for the quantification of theoretical uncertainties. The EFT consistently describes spectra and electromagnetic transitions for $^{62}$Ni, $^{98,100}$Ru, $^{106,108}$Pd, $^{110,112,114}$Cd, and $^{118,120,122}$Te within the theoretical uncertainties. This suggests that these nuclei can be viewed as anharmonic vibrators.

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arXiv2015

Charge, neutron, and weak size of the atomic nucleus

What is the size of the atomic nucleus? This deceivably simple question is difficult to answer. While the electric charge distributions in atomic nuclei were measured accurately already half a century ago, our knowledge of the distribution of neutrons is still deficient. In addition to constraining the size of atomic nuclei, the neutron distribution also impacts the number of nuclei that can exist and the size of neutron stars. We present an ab initio calculation of the neutron distribution of the neutron-rich nucleus $^{48}$Ca. We show that the neutron skin (difference between radii of neutron and proton distributions) is significantly smaller than previously thought. We also make predictions for the electric dipole polarizability and the weak form factor; both quantities are currently targeted by precision measurements. Based on ab initio results for $^{48}$Ca, we provide a constraint on the size of a neutron star.

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arXiv2015

Effective theory for the non-rigid rotor in an electromagnetic field: Toward accurate and precise calculations of E2 transitions in deformed nuclei

We present a model-independent approach to electric quadrupole transitions of deformed nuclei. Based on an effective theory for axially symmetric systems, the leading interactions with electromagnetic fields enter as minimal couplings to gauge potentials, while subleading corrections employ gauge-invariant non-minimal couplings. This approach yields transition operators that are consistent with the Hamiltonian, and the power counting of the effective theory provides us with theoretical uncertainty estimates. We successfully test the effective theory in homonuclear molecules that exhibit a large separation of scales. For ground-state band transitions of rotational nuclei, the effective theory describes data well within theoretical uncertainties at leading order. In order to probe the theory at subleading order, data with higher precision would be valuable. For transitional nuclei, next-to-leading order calculations and the high-precision data are consistent within the theoretical uncertainty estimates. We also study the faint inter-band transitions within the effective theory and focus on the $E2$ transitions from the $0^+_2$ band (the "$β$ band") to the ground-state band. Here, the predictions from the effective theory are consistent with data for several nuclei, thereby proposing a solution to a long-standing challenge.

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arXiv2015

Infrared length scale and extrapolations for the no-core shell model

We precisely determine the infrared (IR) length scale of the no-core shell model (NCSM). In the NCSM, the $A$-body Hilbert space is truncated by the total energy, and the IR length can be determined by equating the intrinsic kinetic energy of $A$ nucleons in the NCSM space to that of $A$ nucleons in a $3(A-1)$-dimensional hyper-radial well with a Dirichlet boundary condition for the hyper radius. We demonstrate that this procedure indeed yields a very precise IR length by performing large-scale NCSM calculations for $^{6}$Li. We apply our result and perform accurate IR extrapolations for bound states of $^{4}$He, $^{6}$He, $^{6}$Li, $^{7}$Li. We also attempt to extrapolate NCSM results for $^{10}$B and $^{16}$O with bare interactions from chiral effective field theory over tens of MeV.

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arXiv2015

Effective Field Theory of Emergent Symmetry Breaking in Deformed Atomic Nuclei

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in non-relativistic quantum systems has previously been addressed in the framework of effective field theory. Low-lying excitations are constructed from Nambu-Goldstone modes using symmetry arguments only. We extend that approach to finite systems. The approach is very general. To be specific, however, we consider atomic nuclei with intrinsically deformed ground states. The emergent symmetry breaking in such systems requires the introduction of additional degrees of freedom on top of the Nambu-Goldstone modes. Symmetry arguments suffice to construct the low-lying states of the system. In deformed nuclei these are vibrational modes each of which serves as band head of a rotational band.

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arXiv2015

Accurate nuclear radii and binding energies from a chiral interaction

With the goal of developing predictive ab-initio capability for light and medium-mass nuclei, two-nucleon and three-nucleon forces from chiral effective field theory are optimized simultaneously to low-energy nucleon-nucleon scattering data, as well as binding energies and radii of few-nucleon systems and selected isotopes of carbon and oxygen. Coupled-cluster calculations based on this interaction, named NNLO$_{\rm sat}$, yield accurate binding energies and radii of nuclei up to $^{40}$Ca, and are consistent with the empirical saturation point of symmetric nuclear matter. In addition, the low-lying collective $J^π=3^-$ states in $^{16}$O and $^{40}$Ca are described accurately, while spectra for selected $p$- and $sd$-shell nuclei are in reasonable agreement with experiment.

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arXiv2015

Giant and pigmy dipole resonances in 4He, 16,22O, and 40Ca from chiral nucleon-nucleon interactions

We combine the coupled-cluster method and the Lorentz integral transform for the computation of inelastic reactions into the continuum. We show that the bound-state-like equation characterizing the Lorentz integral transform method can be reformulated based on extensions of the coupled-cluster equation-of-motion method, and we discuss strategies for viable numerical solutions. Starting from a chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order, we compute the giant dipole resonances of 4He, 16,22O and 40Ca, truncating the coupled-cluster equation-of-motion method at the two-particle-two-hole excitation level. Within this scheme, we find a low-lying E1 strength in the neutron-rich 22O nucleus, which compares fairly well with data from [Leistenschneider et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5442 (2001)]. We also compute the electric dipole polariziability in 40Ca. Deficiencies of the employed Hamiltonian lead to overbinding, too small charge radii and a too small electric dipole polarizability in 40Ca.

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arXiv2014

Ultraviolet extrapolations in finite oscillator bases

The use of finite harmonic oscillator spaces in many-body calculations introduces both infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) errors. The IR effects are well approximated by imposing a hard-wall boundary condition at a properly identified radius L_eff. We show that duality of the oscillator implies that the UV effects are equally well described by imposing a sharp momentum cutoff at a momentum Lambda_eff complementary to L_eff. By considering two-body systems with separable potentials, we show that the UV energy corrections depend on details of the potential, in contrast to the IR energy corrections, which depend only on the S-matrix. An adaptation of the separable treatment to more general interactions is developed and applied to model potentials as well as to the deuteron with realistic potentials. The previous success with a simple phenomenological form for the UV error is also explained. Possibilities for controlled extrapolations for A > 2 based on scaling arguments are discussed.

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arXiv2014

Infrared extrapolations for atomic nuclei

Harmonic oscillator model-space truncations introduce systematic errors to the calculation of binding energies and other observables. We identify the relevant infrared scaling variable and give values for this nucleus-dependent quantity. We consider isotopes of oxygen computed with the coupled-cluster method from chiral nucleon-nucleon interactions at next-to-next-to-leading order and show that the infrared component of the error is sufficiently understood to permit controlled extrapolations. By employing oscillator spaces with relatively large frequencies, well above the energy minimum, the ultraviolet corrections can be suppressed while infrared extrapolations over tens of MeVs are accurate for ground-state energies. However, robust uncertainty quantification for extrapolated quantities that fully accounts for systematic errors is not yet developed.

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arXiv2014

Effects of three-nucleon forces and two-body currents on Gamow-Teller strengths

We optimize chiral interactions at next-to-next-to leading order to observables in two- and three-nucleon systems, and compute Gamow-Teller transitions in carbon-14, oxygen-22 and oxygen-24 using consistent two-body currents. We compute spectra of the daughter nuclei nitrogen-14, fluorine-22 and fluorine-24 via an isospin-breaking coupled-cluster technique, with several predictions. The two-body currents reduce the Ikeda sum rule, corresponding to a quenching factor q^2 ~ 0.84-0.92 of the axial-vector coupling. The half life of carbon-14 depends on the energy of the first excited 1+ state, the three-nucleon force, and the two-body current.

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arXiv2014

Systematic expansion for infrared oscillator basis extrapolations

Recent work has demonstrated that the infrared effects of harmonic oscillator basis truncations are well approximated by imposing a partial-wave Dirichlet boundary condition at a properly identified radius L. This led to formulas for extrapolating the corresponding energy E_L and other observables to infinite L and thus infinite basis size. Here we reconsider the energy for a two-body system with a Dirichlet boundary condition at L to identify and test a consistent and systematic expansion for E_L that depends only on observables. We also generalize the energy extrapolation formula to nonzero angular momentum, and apply it to the deuteron. Formulas given previously for extrapolating the radius are derived in detail.

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arXiv2014

Effective Field Theory for Finite Systems with Spontaneously Broken Symmetry

We extend effective field theory to the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking in genuinely finite quantum systems such as small superfluid systems, molecules or atomic nuclei, and focus on deformed nuclei. In finite superfluids, symmetry arguments alone relate the spectra of systems with different particle numbers. For systems with non-spherical intrinsic ground states such as atomic nuclei or molecules, symmetry arguments alone yield the universal features of the low-lying excitations as vibrations that are the heads of rotational bands. The low-lying excitations in deformed nuclei differ from those in molecules because of symmetry properties caused by pairing.

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arXiv2013

Coupled-cluster computations of atomic nuclei

In the past decade, coupled-cluster theory has seen a renaissance in nuclear physics, with computations of neutron-rich and medium-mass nuclei. The method is efficient for nuclei with product-state references, and it describes many aspects of weakly bound and unbound nuclei. This report reviews the technical and conceptual developments of this method in nuclear physics, and the results of coupled-cluster calculations for nucleonic matter, and for exotic isotopes of helium, oxygen, calcium, and some of their neighbors.

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arXiv2013

Coupled-cluster calculations of nucleonic matter

Background: The equation of state (EoS) of nucleonic matter is central for the understanding of bulk nuclear properties, the physics of neutron star crusts, and the energy release in supernova explosions. Purpose: This work presents coupled-cluster calculations of infinite nucleonic matter using modern interactions from chiral effective field theory (EFT). It assesses the role of correlations beyond particle-particle and hole-hole ladders, and the role of three-nucleon-forces (3NFs) in nuclear matter calculations with chiral interactions. Methods: This work employs the optimized nucleon-nucleon NN potential NNLOopt at next-to-next-to leading-order, and presents coupled-cluster computations of the EoS for symmetric nuclear matter and neutron matter. The coupled-cluster method employs up to selected triples clusters and the single-particle space consists of a momentum-space lattice. We compare our results with benchmark calculations and control finite-size effects and shell oscillations via twist-averaged boundary conditions. Results: We provide several benchmarks to validate the formalism and show that our results exhibit a good convergence toward the thermodynamic limit. While neutron matter with interactions from chiral EFT is perturbative, symmetric nuclear matter requires nonperturbative approaches. Correlations beyond the standard particle-particle ladder approximation yield non-negligible contributions. The saturation point of symmetric nuclear matter is sensitive to the employed 3NFs and the employed regularization scheme. 3NFs with nonlocal cutoffs exhibit a considerably improved convergence than their local cousins. We are unable to find values for the parameters of the short-range part of the local 3NF that simultaneously yield acceptable values for the saturation point in symmetric nuclear matter and the binding energies of light nuclei.

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arXiv2013

Universal properties of infrared oscillator basis extrapolations

Recent work has shown that a finite harmonic oscillator basis in nuclear many-body calculations effectively imposes a hard-wall boundary condition in coordinate space, motivating infrared extrapolation formulas for the energy and other observables. Here we further refine these formulas by studying two-body models and the deuteron. We accurately determine the box size as a function of the model space parameters, and compute scattering phase shifts in the harmonic oscillator basis. We show that the energy shift can be well approximated in terms of the asymptotic normalization coefficient and the bound-state momentum, discuss higher-order corrections for weakly bound systems, and illustrate this universal property using unitarily equivalent calculations of the deuteron.

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arXiv2013

An optimized chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction at next-to-next-to-leading order

We optimize the nucleon-nucleon interaction from chiral effective field theory at next-to-next- to-leading order. The resulting new chiral force NNLOopt yields χ^2 \approx 1 per degree of freedom for laboratory energies below approximately 125 MeV. In the A = 3, 4 nucleon systems, the contributions of three-nucleon forces are smaller than for previous parametrizations of chiral interactions. We use NNLOopt to study properties of key nuclei and neutron matter, and demonstrate that many aspects of nuclear structure can be understood in terms of this nucleon-nucleon interaction, without explicitly invoking three-nucleon forces.

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arXiv2013

Rotational constants of multi-phonon bands in an effective theory for deformed nuclei

We consider deformed nuclei within an effective theory that exploits the small ratio between rotational and vibrational excitations. For even-even nuclei, the effective theory predicts small changes in the rotational constants of bands built on multi-phonon excitations that are linear in the number of excited phonons. In 166Er and 168Er, this explains the main variations of the rotational constants of the two-phonon gamma vibrational bands. In 232Th, the effective theory correctly explains the trend that the rotational constants decrease with increasing spin of the band head. We also study the effective theory for deformed odd nuclei. Here, time-odd terms enter the Lagrangian and generate effective magnetic forces that yield the high level densities observed in such nuclei.

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