Nuclear properties with semilocal momentum-space regularized chiral interactions beyond N2LO

TL;DR

This study advances nuclear modeling by incorporating higher-order chiral interactions up to fifth order, achieving accurate predictions for nuclear energies and spectra across light to medium-mass nuclei, with some discrepancies in charge radii.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive approach using higher-order chiral interactions up to N$^3$LO, improving predictions of nuclear properties with minimal input data.

Findings

Accurately predicts ground state energies of nuclei up to $A=48$.

Successfully reproduces spectra of light $p$-shell nuclei.

Charge radii are underpredicted by about 10-20%."

Abstract

We present a comprehensive investigation of few-nucleon systems as well as light and medium-mass nuclei up to $A=48$ using the current Low Energy Nuclear Physics International Collaboration two-nucleon interactions in combination with the third-order (N$^2$LO) three-nucleon forces. To address the systematic overbinding of nuclei starting from $A \sim 10$ found in our earlier study utilizing the N$^2$LO two- and three-nucleon forces, we take into account higher-order corrections to the two-nucleon potentials up through fifth order in chiral effective field theory. The resulting Hamiltonian can be completely determined using the $A=3$ binding energies and selected nucleon-deuteron cross sections as input. It is then shown to predict other nucleon-deuteron scattering observables and spectra of light $p$-shell nuclei, for which a detailed correlated truncation error analysis is performed, in agreement with experimental data. Moreover, the predicted ground state energies of nuclei in the oxygen isotopic chain from $^{14}$O to $^{26}$O as well as $^{40}$Ca and $^{48}$Ca show a remarkably good agreement with experimental values, given that the Hamiltonian is fixed completely from the $A \leq 3$ data, once the fourth-order (N$^3$LO) corrections to the two-nucleon interactions are taken into account. On the other hand, the charge radii are found to be underpredicted by $\sim 10\%$ for the oxygen isotopes and by almost $20\%$ for $^{40}$Ca and $^{48}$Ca.