A new tool in nuclear physics: Nuclear lattice simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel ab initio nuclear physics method combining chiral effective field theory with Monte Carlo simulations, enabling precise calculations of nuclear structures and exploring fundamental parameter variations.

Contribution

It presents a new computational approach for nuclear structure calculations that integrates effective field theories with Monte Carlo techniques.

Findings

Successful calculations of 12C and 16O spectra and structures

Ability to study nuclei under different fundamental parameters

Supports testing the anthropic principle in nuclear physics

Abstract

In the last years, chiral effective field theory has been successfully developed for and applied to systems with few nucleons. Here, I present a new approach for ab initio calculations of nuclei that combines these precise and systematic forces with Monte Carlo simulation techniques that allow for exact solutions of the nuclear A-body problem. A short introduction of this method is given and a few assorted results concerning the spectrum and structure of 12C and 16O are presented. The framework further allows one to study the properties of nuclei in worlds that have fundamental parameters different from the ones in Nature. This allows for a physics test of the anthropic principle by addressing the question how strongly the generation of the life-relevant elements depends on the light quark masses and the electromagnetic fine structure constant.