Auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of light and medium-mass nuclei with local chiral interactions

TL;DR

This paper develops an auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo method to study light and medium-mass nuclei using local chiral interactions, providing detailed results on nuclear properties up to oxygen-16.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm combined with local chiral interactions up to N2LO, analyzing their effects on nuclear properties.

Findings

Local chiral interactions accurately reproduce ground-state properties of nuclei up to 16O.

Different operator structures in three-body forces significantly affect results.

Softer cutoffs can lead to overbinding in larger nuclei.

Abstract

Quantum Monte Carlo methods have recently been employed to study properties of nuclei and infinite matter using local chiral effective field theory interactions. In this work, we present a detailed description of the auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm for nuclei in combination with local chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order. We show results for the binding energy, charge radius, charge form factor, and Coulomb sum rule in nuclei with $3\le A\le16$. Particular attention is devoted to the effect of different operator structures in the three-body force for different cutoffs. The outcomes suggest that local chiral interactions fit to few-body observables give a very good description of the ground-state properties of nuclei up to $^{16}$O, with the exception of one fit for the softer cutoff which predicts overbinding in larger nuclei.