Error estimates on Nuclear Binding Energies from Nucleon-Nucleon uncertainties

TL;DR

This paper estimates the systematic errors in nuclear binding energies caused by uncertainties in nucleon-nucleon interactions, providing bounds that inform more precise ab initio nuclear calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using coarse grained interactions to quantify the impact of NN potential uncertainties on nuclear binding energy estimates.

Findings

Error bounds of 0.1-0.4 MeV per particle for nuclear binding energies.

Systematic error estimates related to potential form influence nuclear mass calculations.

Framework for improving ab initio calculations with quantified uncertainties.

Abstract

Despite great theoretical efforts the NN interaction can only be determined with a finite precision, implying an error upper bound for nuclear masses. We analyze for the first time the problem of estimating the systematic errors related to the form of the potential and their impact on nuclear binding. To this end we exploit the concept of coarse grained interactions to typical nuclear wavelengths. Our estimate gives an error of 0.1-0.4 MeV for the binding energy per particle and paves the way for ab initio calculations tailored to such a precision.