Family of Chiral Two- plus Three-Nucleon Interactions for Accurate Nuclear Structure Studies

TL;DR

This paper develops a family of chiral nucleon interactions up to N3LO that accurately predict nuclear ground-state energies and radii across a wide range of nuclei, with quantified uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a new set of consistent chiral NN+3N interactions that improve predictions of nuclear properties and systematically assess theoretical uncertainties.

Findings

Accurately reproduces experimental energies and radii for nuclei from p-shell to nickel isotopes.

Quantifies the uncertainties due to interaction choices and cutoff dependence.

Demonstrates order-by-order convergence in chiral expansion.

Abstract

We present a family of nucleon-nucleon (NN) plus three-nucleon (3N) interactions up to N3LO in the chiral expansion that provides an accurate ab initio description of ground-state energies and charge radii up to the medium-mass regime with quantified theory uncertainties. Starting from the NN interactions proposed by Entem, Machleidt and Nosyk, we construct 3N interactions with consistent chiral order, non-local regulator, and cutoff value and explore the dependence of nuclear observables over a range of mass numbers on the 3N low-energy constants. By fixing these constants using the 3-H and 16-O ground-state energies, we obtain interactions that robustly reproduce experimental energies and radii for large range from p-shell nuclei to the nickel isotopic chain and resolve many of the deficiencies of previous interactions. Based on the order-by-order convergence and the cutoff dependence of nuclear observables, we assess the uncertainties due the interaction, which yield a significant contribution to the total theory uncertainty.