Helium nuclei, deuteron and dineutron in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses lattice QCD to calculate the binding energies of light nuclei and nucleon pairs at a heavy pion mass, confirming their bound states and comparing results with previous studies.

Contribution

First lattice QCD calculation of binding energies for light nuclei at this pion mass, analyzing volume dependence to identify bound states.

Findings

^4He, ^3He, deuteron, and dineutron are bound at m_pi=0.51 GeV.

Binding energies are consistent with previous quenched studies.

Volume dependence analysis confirms bound states.

Abstract

We calculate the binding energies for multi-nucleon bound states with the nuclear mass number less than or equal to 4 in 2+1 flavor QCD at the lattice spacing of a = 0.09 fm employing a relatively heavy quark mass corresponding to m_pi = 0.51 GeV. To distinguish a bound state from attractive scattering states, we investigate the volume dependence of the energy shift between the ground state and the state of free nucleons by changing the spatial extent of the lattice from 2.9 fm to 5.8 fm. We conclude that ^4He, ^3He, deuteron and dineutron are bound at m_pi = 0.51 GeV. We compare their binding energies with those in our quenched studies and also with several previous investigations.