The Density Matrix Renormalization Group and the Nuclear Shell Model

TL;DR

This paper presents an angular-momentum-conserving variant of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group method, enabling efficient large-scale shell model calculations for atomic nuclei with high accuracy and reduced computational space.

Contribution

It introduces a practical truncation strategy for nuclear shell models using an angular-momentum-conserving DMRG variant, demonstrating its effectiveness on test cases.

Findings

High agreement with exact shell-model results

Significant reduction in the required computational space

Effective for nuclei in the 2p-1f shell with KB3 interaction

Abstract

We summarize recent efforts to develop an angular-momentum-conserving variant of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group method into a practical truncation strategy for large-scale shell model calculations of atomic nuclei. Following a brief description of the key elements of the method, we report the results of test calculations for $^{48}$Cr and $^{56}$Ni. In both cases we consider nucleons limited to the 2p-1f shell and interacting via the KB3 interaction. Both calculations produce a high level of agreement with the exact shell-model results. Furthermore, and most importantly, the fraction of the complete space required to achieve this high level of agreement goes down rapidly as the size of the full space grows.