Nuclear and neutron-star matter from local chiral interactions

TL;DR

This paper presents quantum Monte Carlo calculations of nuclear and neutron-star matter using local chiral interactions, accurately reproducing empirical saturation properties and aligning with astrophysical constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of local chiral effective field theory interactions in quantum Monte Carlo methods for nuclear matter.

Findings

Accurately reproduces saturation density and energy.

Derives symmetry energy consistent with experimental constraints.

Pressure aligns with gravitational wave observations from neutron-star mergers.

Abstract

We report a quantum Monte Carlo calculation of the equation of state of symmetric nuclear matter using local interactions derived from chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-leading order fit to few-body observables only. The empirical saturation density and energy are well reproduced within statistical and systematic uncertainties. We have also derived the symmetry energy as a function of the density, finding good agreement with available experimentally derived constraints at saturation and twice saturation density. We find that the corresponding pressure is also in excellent agreement with recent constraints extracted from gravitational waves of the neutron-star merger GW170817 by the LIGO-Virgo detection.