Medium-mass nuclei from chiral nucleon-nucleon interactions

TL;DR

This study uses coupled-cluster theory with chiral nucleon-nucleon interactions to compute properties of medium-mass nuclei, achieving well-converged results and providing insights into nuclear structure and shell model foundations.

Contribution

First application of coupled-cluster theory with bare chiral interactions to medium-mass nuclei, including calculations of densities and shell model implications.

Findings

Well-converged binding energies and radii in 15-shell model spaces

Doubly magic nuclei are slightly underbound by about 1 MeV per nucleon

Computed density matrices and natural orbitals support microscopic shell model foundations

Abstract

We compute the binding energies, radii, and densities for selected medium-mass nuclei within coupled-cluster theory and employ the "bare" chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction at order N3LO. We find rather well-converged results in model spaces consisting of 15 oscillator shells, and the doubly magic nuclei 40Ca, 48Ca, and the exotic 48Ni are underbound by about 1 MeV per nucleon within the CCSD approximation. The binding-energy difference between the mirror nuclei 48Ca and 48Ni is close to theoretical mass table evaluations. Our computation of the one-body density matrices and the corresponding natural orbitals and occupation numbers provides a first step to a microscopic foundation of the nuclear shell model.