Local chiral effective field theory interactions and quantum Monte Carlo applications

TL;DR

This paper develops local chiral effective field theory interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order and applies quantum Monte Carlo methods to study neutron matter, demonstrating good agreement with perturbative calculations.

Contribution

It introduces systematically derived local chiral potentials and applies quantum Monte Carlo techniques to neutron matter, comparing with perturbative results.

Findings

Quantum Monte Carlo results agree with perturbative calculations at low cutoffs.

Local chiral potentials accurately reproduce nucleon-nucleon phase shifts.

Spectral-function regularization effects are systematically studied.

Abstract

We present details of the derivation of local chiral effective field theory interactions to next-to-next-to-leading order, and show results for nucleon-nucleon phase shifts and deuteron properties for these potentials. We then perform systematic auxiliary-field diffusion Monte Carlo calculations for neutron matter based on the developed local chiral potentials at different orders. This includes studies of the effects of the spectral-function regularization and of the local regulators. For all orders, we compare the quantum Monte Carlo results with perturbative many-body calculations and find excellent agreement for low cutoffs.