Nuclear-matter saturation and symmetry energy within $\Delta$--full chiral effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a statistical framework using realistic nuclear forces within $ abla$-full chiral effective field theory to improve predictions of nuclear saturation and symmetry energy, crucial for nuclear physics and neutron star studies.

Contribution

It introduces a unified approach combining emulators and iterative history-matching to calibrate $ abla$-full chiral interactions with reduced uncertainties.

Findings

Calibration with uc{16}{O} observables yields more precise saturation predictions.

The framework effectively explores the large parameter space of chiral interactions.

Uncertainty quantification enhances confidence in nuclear matter property predictions.

Abstract

Nuclear saturation and the symmetry energy are key properties of low-energy nuclear physics that depend on fine details of the nuclear interaction. The equation-of-state around saturation is also an important anchor for extrapolations to higher densities and studies of neutron stars. Here we develop a unified statistical framework that uses realistic nuclear forces to link the theoretical modeling of finite nuclei and infinite nuclear matter. We construct fast and accurate emulators for nuclear-matter observables and employ an iterative history-matching approach to explore and reduce the enormous parameter domain of $\Delta$-full chiral interactions. We perform rigorous uncertainty quantification and find that model calibration including \nuc{16}{O} observables gives saturation predictions that are more precise than those that only use few-body data.