Ab initio nuclear thermodynamics from lattice effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient ab initio lattice effective field theory method using the pinhole trace algorithm to accurately compute nuclear thermodynamics, including the equation of state and critical points, with significant computational advantages.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel computational approach that enables precise ab initio calculations of nuclear thermodynamics using a fixed-particle-number lattice method.

Findings

Accurate calculation of the nuclear equation of state.

Determination of the liquid-vapor coexistence line and critical point.

Significant computational efficiency over grand canonical methods.

Abstract

We show that the {\it ab initio} calculations of nuclear thermodynamics can be performed efficiently using lattice effective field theory. The simulations use a new approach called the pinhole trace algorithm to calculate thermodynamic observables for a fixed number of protons and neutrons enclosed in a finite box. In this framework, we calculate the equation of state, the liquid-vapor coexistence line and the critical point of neutral symmetric nuclear matter with high precision. Since the algorithm uses a canonical ensemble with a fixed number of particles, it provides a sizable computational advantage over grand canonical ensemble simulations that can be a factor of several thousands to as much as several millions for large volume simulations.