Medium-heavy nuclei from nucleon-nucleon interactions in lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses nucleon-nucleon interactions derived from lattice QCD to investigate properties of medium-heavy nuclei like oxygen-16 and calcium-40, revealing they are bound at a heavier pseudo-scalar meson mass and showing qualitative agreement with empirical data.

Contribution

First application of lattice QCD-based nucleon-nucleon forces to study medium-heavy doubly-magic nuclei, demonstrating their binding and structural properties.

Findings

Nuclei are bound at M_PS ~ 470 MeV

Mass number dependence aligns qualitatively with empirical data

Bound energies are smaller than those of real nuclei

Abstract

On the basis of the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock method with the nucleon-nucleon forces obtained from lattice QCD simulations, the properties of the medium-heavy doubly-magic nuclei such as 16^O and 40^Ca are investigated. We found that those nuclei are bound for the pseudo-scalar meson mass M_PS ~ 470 MeV. The mass number dependence of the binding energies, single-particle spectra and density distributions are qualitatively consistent with those expected from empirical data at the physical point, although these hypothetical nuclei at heavy quark mass have smaller binding energies than the real nuclei.