From low-momentum interactions to nuclear structure

TL;DR

This paper reviews how low-momentum interactions, softened via renormalization group techniques, improve nuclear structure calculations by enhancing convergence and clarifying their relation to chiral effective field theory.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of RG-based methods for low-momentum nuclear interactions and their application to nuclear and infinite matter calculations.

Findings

Enhanced convergence in nuclear many-body calculations.

Decoupling of low and high momenta improves computational efficiency.

Clarifies the relationship between RG methods and chiral EFT.

Abstract

We present an overview of low-momentum two-nucleon and many-body interactions and their use in calculations of nuclei and infinite matter. The softening of phenomenological and effective field theory (EFT) potentials by renormalization group (RG) transformations that decouple low and high momenta leads to greatly enhanced convergence in few- and many-body systems while maintaining a decreasing hierarchy of many-body forces. This review surveys the RG-based technology and results, discusses the connections to chiral EFT, and clarifies various misconceptions.