# Quantum Monte Carlo Methods in Nuclear Physics: Recent Advances

## TL;DR

Recent advances in quantum Monte Carlo methods combined with effective field theories have significantly improved understanding of nuclear systems, neutron matter, and electroweak processes, enabling studies of heavier nuclei and neutron stars.

## Contribution

This review highlights recent progress in QMC techniques with chiral EFT interactions, expanding applicability to complex nuclear systems and astrophysical phenomena.

## Key findings

- Enhanced QMC methods enable studies of medium-mass nuclei.
- Development of local chiral EFT interactions improves accuracy.
- Insights into neutron matter and neutron star properties.

## Abstract

In recent years, the combination of precise quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods with realistic nuclear interactions and consistent electroweak currents, in particular those constructed within effective field theories (EFTs), has lead to new insights in light and medium-mass nuclei, neutron matter, and electroweak reactions. This compelling new body of work has been made possible both by advances in QMC methods for nuclear physics, which push the bounds of applicability to heavier nuclei and to asymmetric nuclear matter and by the development of local chiral EFT interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order and minimally nonlocal interactions including $\Delta$ degrees of freedom. In this review, we discuss these recent developments and give an overview of the exciting results for nuclei, neutron matter and neutron stars, and electroweak reactions.