Nuclear Forces from Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics

TL;DR

This paper reviews how Lattice QCD enables direct, computationally intensive calculations of nuclear forces from fundamental theory, promising to refine nuclear models and improve understanding of nuclear matter.

Contribution

It discusses recent advances and future prospects of Lattice QCD in calculating nuclear forces directly from the Standard Model, bridging the gap between fundamental theory and nuclear physics.

Findings

Lattice QCD calculations are increasingly precise for nuclear quantities.

Upcoming exa-scale computing will enhance direct QCD calculations of nuclear interactions.

Refinement of chiral nuclear forces from QCD will improve nuclear many-body models.

Abstract

A century of coherent experimental and theoretical investigations have uncovered the laws of nature that underly nuclear physics. The standard model of strong and electroweak interactions, with its modest number of input parameters, dictates the dynamics of the quarks and gluons - the underlying building blocks of protons, neutrons, and nuclei. While the analytic techniques of quantum field theory have played a key role in understanding the dynamics of matter in high energy processes, they encounter difficulties when applied to low-energy nuclear structure and reactions, and dense systems. Expected increases in computational resources into the exa-scale during the next decade will provide the ability to numerically compute a range of important strong interaction processes directly from QCD with quantifiable uncertainties using the technique of Lattice QCD. These calculations will refine the chiral nuclear forces that are used as input into nuclear many-body calculations, including the three- and four-nucleon interactions. I discuss the state-of-the-art Lattice QCD calculations of quantities of interest in nuclear physics, progress that is expected in the near future, and the impact upon nuclear physics.