arXiv subjects

Thomas Duguet

Publications and source records attributed to Thomas Duguet.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Ab initio anatomy of quadrupole correlations in $^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne

Azimuthal hadronic flow measured in ultra-relativistic ion--ion collisions provides a new means of imaging multipole correlations in the ground state of atomic nuclei. Early interpretations largely relied on a classical-rotor picture, in which the measured mean-square elliptic flow is directly related to an intrinsic quadrupole deformation. Atomic nuclei, however, contain additional many-body correlations generated by the Pauli exclusion principle, collective shape fluctuations and non-collective dynamical processes, whose impact on this correspondence has not yet been elucidated. Here, we resolve this issue through an ab initio analysis of $^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne based on chiral nuclear interactions, combining the in-medium similarity renormalization group with the quantum-number-projected generator coordinate method. By successively isolating antisymmetrization, collective rotational and vibrational, and non-collective dynamical correlations, we determine, for the first time, how each component contributes to the mean-square quadrupole eccentricity. We uncover an unexpected compensation among these distinct correlation mechanisms: despite sizable individual contributions, the squared effective quadrupole deformation inferred from the elliptic flow remains close to the square intrinsic deformation of the nucleus. This result provides a microscopic explanation for the surprising success of the classical-rotor approximation and establishes a quantitative foundation for interpreting $^{16}$O+$^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne+$^{20}$Ne collision data recently collected at the Large Hadron Collider.

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arXiv2026

Algebraic Diagrammatic Construction of the Multichannel Dyson Equation

The multichannel Dyson equation (MCDE) was recently introduced as a new approximation scheme to compute the one-body Green function in many-body systems, as reported by Riva et al. in Physical Review Letters, volume 131, article 216401, published in 2023. The physical content of this novel approximation scheme is further clarified by recovering it from an extended version of the algebraic diagrammatic construction (ADC) truncation scheme. It is thus demonstrated that the MCDE approximation lies in between the so-called ADC(2) and ADC(3) truncations of the dynamical self energy. Building on this clarification, the MCDE approximation is tested on the periodic one-dimensional Hubbard model with 4, 6, and 8 site lattices and shown to deliver an improved treatment over ADC(2) of both the quasiparticle peaks and the so-called satellites in the spectral strength distribution.

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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

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 ($χ$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 $χ$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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arXiv2026

Quantum effects in the quadrupole rotor picture of ultra-relativistic ion-ion collisions

The azimuthal hadronic flow observed in ultra-relativistic ion-ion collisions provides a sensitive probe of many-body ground-state correlations in the colliding nuclei. In particular, collective correlations associated with nuclear "intrinsic deformation" are expected to leave pronounced fingerprints on specific final-state observables. However, such effects are commonly interpreted within a classical rigid-rotor picture, despite the intrinsically quantum nature of nuclei. In this Letter, the validity of this interpretation is assessed systematically across the nuclear chart by comparing the quantum quadrupole rotor with its classical rigid-rotor limit. Quantum contributions associated with the fermionic nature of the nucleons are shown to be largely independent of shell effects, and hence of the intrinsic deformation. While they account for nearly all of the quantum rotor effective quadrupole deformation in light and/or spherical nuclei, they drop below 10% in intrinsically well deformed heavy nuclei. The present letter demonstrates that a quantitative interpretation of nuclear-structure effects in final-state observables requires going beyond the classical rigid-rotor paradigm. Beyond the quantum contributions quantified presently, correlations associated with collective vibrations and with the non-collective nucleonic motion must be further included and characterized.

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arXiv2026

Imaging two-body correlations in atomic nuclei via low- and high-energy processes

Characterizing the correlated behavior of nucleons inside atomic nuclei constitutes a long-standing challenge, both experimentally and theoretically. It has recently been understood that two-particle correlations in the azimuthal distribution of final hadrons emitted in ultra-relativistic ultra-central ion-ion collisions can be used to quantify ground-state two-body correlations. Performing systematic ab initio nuclear structure calculations of light nuclei, we demonstrate that such an observable does provide a meaningful imaging of nuclear ground states, naturally leading to a robust interpretation of the various categories of two-nucleon correlations at play. This is at variance with the low-energy approach relying on Kumar operators whose traditional interpretation in terms of deformation parameters is shown to be inoperative. A future interesting development will consist of targeting specific three-particle correlations to isolate three-nucleon correlations in which additional nuclear structure information of interest leave their fingerprint.

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arXiv2025

M1 dipole strength from projected generator coordinate method calculations in the sd-shell valence space

The low-energy enhancement observed in the deexcitation $γ$-ray strength functions, attributed to magnetic dipole (M1) radiations, has spurred theoretical efforts to improve on its description. Among the most widely used approaches are the quasiparticle random-phase approximation (QRPA) and its extensions. However, these methods often struggle to reproduce the correct behavior of the M1 strength at the lowest $γ$ energies. An alternative framework, the projected generator coordinate method (PGCM), offers significant advantages over QRPA by restoring broken symmetries and incorporating both vibrational and rotational dynamics within a unified description. Due to these features, PGCM has been proposed as a promising tool to study the low-energy M1 strength function in atomic nuclei. However, comprehensive investigations employing this method are lacking. The PGCM is presently used within the frame of sd-shell valence space calculations based on the USDB shell-model interaction to benchmark its performance against the solutions obtained via exact diagonalization. The reliability of two different sets of generator coordinates in the PGCM calculations is gauged using ${}^{24}$Mg as a test case. The ability of the PGCM to reproduce results from exact diagonalization in the sd valence space is demonstrated for $1^{+}$ states and M1 transitions. Future work will need to assess whether the proposed method can be applied systematically and extended to large-scale calculations while maintaining a reasonable computational cost.

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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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arXiv2025

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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arXiv2025

Anisotropic flow in fixed-target $^{208}$Pb+$^{20}$Ne collisions as a probe of quark-gluon plasma

The System for Measuring Overlap with Gas (SMOG2) at the LHCb detector enables the study of fixed-target ion-ion collisions at relativistic energies ($\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}\sim100$ GeV in the centre-of-mass). With input from \textit{ab initio} calculations of the structure of $^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne, we compute 3+1D hydrodynamic predictions for the anisotropic flow of Pb+Ne and Pb+O collisions, to be tested with upcoming LHCb data. This will allow the detailed study of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation as well as experimental tests of the predicted nuclear shapes. Elliptic flow ($v_2$) in Pb+Ne collisions is greatly enhanced compared to the Pb+O baseline due to the shape of $^{20}$Ne, which is deformed in a bowling-pin geometry. Owing to the large $^{208}$Pb radius, this effect is seen in a broad centrality range, a unique feature of this collision configuration. Larger elliptic flow further enhances the quadrangular flow ($v_4$) of Pb+Ne collisions via non-linear coupling, and impacts the sign of the kurtosis of the elliptic flow vector distribution ($c_2\{4\}$). Exploiting the shape of $^{20}$Ne proves thus an ideal method to investigate the formation of QGP in fixed-target experiments at LHCb, and demonstrates the power of SMOG2 as a tool to image nuclear ground states.

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arXiv2025

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

Deformed natural orbitals for ab initio calculations

The rapid development of ab initio nuclear structure methods towards doubly open-shell nuclei, heavy nuclei and greater accuracy occurs at the price of evermore increased computational costs, especially RAM and CPU time. While most of the numerical simulations are carried out by expanding relevant operators and wave functions on the spherical harmonic oscillator basis, alternative one-body bases offering advantages in terms of computational efficiency have recently been investigated. In particular, the so-called natural basis used in combination with symmetry-conserving methods applicable to doubly closed-shell nuclei has proven beneficial in this respect. The present work examines the performance of the natural basis in the context of symmetry-breaking many-body calculations enabling the description of superfluid and deformed open-shell nuclei at polynomial cost with system's size. First, it is demonstrated that the advantage observed for closed-shell nuclei carries over to open-shell ones. A detailed investigation of natural-orbital wave functions provides useful insight to support this finding and to explain the superiority of the natural basis over alternative ones. Second, it is shown that the use of natural orbitals combined with importance-truncation techniques leads to an even greater gain in terms of computational costs. The presents results pave the way for the systematic use of natural-orbital bases in future implementations of non-perturbative many-body methods.

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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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arXiv2024

Dimensionality reduction through tensor factorization : application to \textit{ab initio} nuclear physics calculations

The construction of predictive models of atomic nuclei from first principles is a challenging (yet necessary) task towards the systematic generation of theoretical predictions (and associated uncertainties) to support nuclear data evaluation. The consistent description of the rich phenomenology of nuclear systems indeed requires the introduction of reductionist approaches that construct nuclei directly from interacting nucleons by solving the associated quantum many-body problem. In this context, so-called \textit{ab initio} methods offer a promising route by deriving controlled (and systematically improvable) approximations both to the inter-nucleon interaction and to the solutions of the many-body problem. From a technical point of view, approximately solving the many-body Schrödinger equation in heavy open-shell systems typically requires the construction and contraction of large mode-4 (mode-6) tensors that need to be stored repeatedly. Recently, a new dimensionality reduction method based on randomized singular value decomposition has been introduced to reduce the numerical cost of many-body perturbation theory. This work applies this lightweight formalism to the study of the Germanium isotopic chain, where standard approaches would be too expansive to run. Inclusion of triaxiality is found to improve the overall agreement with experimental data on differential quantities.

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arXiv2024

Ab initio description of monopole resonances in light- and medium-mass nuclei: IV. Angular momentum projection and rotation-vibration coupling

Giant Resonances are, with nuclear rotations, the most evident expression of collectivity in finite nuclei. These two categories of excitations, however, are traditionally described within different formal schemes, such that vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom are separately treated and coupling effects between those are often neglected. The present work puts forward an approach aiming at a consitent treatment of vibrations and rotations. Specifically, this paper is the last in a series of four dedicated to the investigation of the giant monopole resonance in doubly open-shell nuclei via the ab initio Projected Generator Coordinate Method (PGCM). The present focus is on the treatment and impact of angular momentum restoration within such calculations. The PGCM being based on the use of deformed mean-field states, the angular-momentum restoration is performed when solving the secular equation to extract vibrational excitations. In this context, it is shown that performing the angular momentum restoration only after solving the secular equation contaminates the monopole response with an unphysical coupling to the rotational motion, as was also shown recently for (quasi-particle) random phase approximation calculations based on a deformed reference state. Eventually, the present work based on the PGCM confirms that an a priori angular momentum restoration is necessary to handle consistently both collective motions at the same time. This further pleads in favor of implementing the full-fledged projected (quasi-particle) random phase approximation in the future.

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arXiv2024

Eigenvector Continuation and Projection-Based Emulators

Eigenvector continuation is a computational method for parametric eigenvalue problems that uses subspace projection with a basis derived from eigenvector snapshots from different parameter sets. It is part of a broader class of subspace-projection techniques called reduced-basis methods. In this colloquium article, we present the development, theory, and applications of eigenvector continuation and projection-based emulators. We introduce the basic concepts, discuss the underlying theory and convergence properties, and present recent applications for quantum systems and future prospects.

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arXiv2024

On the calculation and use of effective single-particle energies. The example of the neutron $1d_{3/2}$-$1d_{5/2}$ splitting along $\text{N}=20$ isotones

The rich phenomenology of quantum many-body systems such as atomic nuclei is complex to interpret. Often, the behaviour (e.g. evolution with the number of constituents) of measurable/observable quantities such as binding or excitation energies can be best understood on the basis of a simplified picture involving auxiliary quantities that are not observable, i.e. whose values vary with parameters that are internal to the theoretical construction (contrarily to measurable/observable quantities). While being useful, the simplified interpretation is thus theoretical-scheme-dependent. This applies, in particular, to the so-called single-nucleon shell structure based on auxiliary effective single-particle energies (ESPEs). In this context, the present work aims at (i) recalling the way to compute ESPEs out of solutions of many-body Schrödinger's equation, (ii) illustrating the use of ESPEs within the frame of state-of-the-art ab initio calculations to interpret the outcome of a recent nuclear experiment and (iii) demonstrating the impact of several alterations to the computation of ESPEs. While the chosen alterations constitute approximations within the ab initio scheme, they are built-in when employing other theoretical constructs at play in nuclear physics. The present considerations are thus meant to empirically illustrate variations that can be expected between ESPEs computed within different (equally valid) theoretical schemes.

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arXiv2024

Ab initio description of monopole resonances in light- and medium-mass nuclei: III. Moments evaluation in ab initio PGCM calculations

The paper is the third of a series dedicated to the ab initio description of monopole giant resonances in mid-mass closed- and open-shell nuclei via the so-called projected generator coordinate method. The present focus is on the computation of the moments $m_k$ of the monopole strength distribution, which are used to quantify its centroid energy and dispersion. First, the capacity to compute low-order moments via two different methods is developed and benchmarked for the $m_1$ moment. Second, the impact of the angular momentum projection on the centroid energy and dispersion of the monopole strength is analysed before comparing the results to those obtained from consistent quasi-particle random phase approximation calculations. Next, the so-called energy weighted sum rule (EWSR) is investigated. First, the appropriate ESWR in the center-of-mass frame is derived analytically. Second, the exhaustion of the intrinsic EWSR is tested in order to quantify the (unwanted) local-gauge symmetry breaking of the presently employed chiral effective field theory ($χ$EFT) interactions. Finally, the infinite nuclear matter incompressibility associated with the employed $χ$EFT interactions is extracted by extrapolating the finite-nucleus incompressibility computed from the monopole centroid energy.

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