The comparison of the state-of-the-art nucleon-nucleon potentials from phase shift to nuclear matter

TL;DR

This paper systematically compares various high-precision nucleon-nucleon potentials by analyzing phase shifts, cross sections, entanglement entropy, and equations of state, revealing significant differences in high angular momentum, energy, and density regimes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of state-of-the-art $NN$ potentials across multiple physical observables and conditions, highlighting their differences in high-energy and high-density scenarios.

Findings

Significant differences in phase shifts at high angular momentum.

Variations in equations of state for nuclear matter.

Discrepancies in entanglement entropy across potentials.

Abstract

The nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) potential is the residual interaction of the strong interaction in the low-energy region and is also the fundamental input to the study of atomic nuclei. Based on the non-perturbative properties of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD), $NN$ potential is not yet directly accessible from QCD theory. Therefore, various models of $NN$ interactions have been constructed based on Yukawa's meson exchange pictures since the 1930s, including one-boson-exchange models, coordinate operator models and chiral effective field models. Analysis of extensive $NN$ scattering data has shown that the two-body nuclear force exhibits a short-range repulsion and intermediate-range attraction, and decays rapidly with increasing distance. A series of charge-dependent high-precision $NN$ interactions have been further developed in the past thirty years, such as the AV18 potential, CD-Bonn potential, pvCD-Bonn potentials, and the chiral effective nuclear potentials with momentum expansion up to the fifth order. In this work, the phase shifts at different channels, the cross sections, the entanglement entropy in spin space, and the equations of state of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter from these high-precision $NN$ interactions are calculated and systematically compared. It can be found that they have significant differences in the cases with high angular momentum, high laboratory energy, and high-density regions.