Effective interactions for light nuclei: an effective (field theory) approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a new effective field theory approach for constructing interactions suitable for many-body nuclear calculations, demonstrated on light nuclei and trapped atomic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a no-core shell-model based effective field theory method tailored for light nuclei and few-atom systems, addressing a key challenge in nuclear physics.

Findings

Successful application to light nuclei

Effective in few-atom harmonic traps

Outlines future extensions and challenges

Abstract

One of the central open problems in nuclear physics is the construction of effective interactions suitable for many-body calculations. We discuss a recently developed approach to this problem, where one starts with an effective field theory containing only fermion fields and formulated directly in a no-core shell-model space. We present applications to light nuclei and to systems of a few atoms in a harmonic-oscillator trap. Future applications and extensions, as well as challenges, are also considered.