Modern Ab Initio Approaches and Applications in Few-Nucleon Physics with A \ge 4

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of ab initio methods for systems with four or more nucleons, highlighting advances, applications, and benchmark results that improve the accuracy of nuclear physics calculations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of modern ab initio approaches for A ≥ 4 nuclei, emphasizing their evolution, applications, and benchmark achievements.

Findings

Progress in ab initio methods enables precision calculations for A ≥ 4 systems.

Benchmark results serve as standards for theoretical and experimental comparisons.

Developments help assess the suitability of force models in nuclear dynamics.

Abstract

We present an overview of the evolution of ab initio methods for few-nucleon systems with A \ge 4, tracing the progress made that today allows precision calculations for these systems. First a succinct description of the diverse approaches is given. In order to identify analogies and differences the methods are grouped according to different formulations of the quantum mechanical many-body problem. Various significant applications from the past and present are described. We discuss the results with emphasis on the developments following the original implementations of the approaches. In particular we highlight benchmark results which represent important milestones towards setting an ever growing standard for theoretical calculations. This is relevant for meaningful comparisons with experimental data. Such comparisons may reveal whether a specific force model is appropriate for the description of nuclear dynamics.