Improved structure of calcium isotopes from ab initio calculations

TL;DR

This paper advances nuclear structure calculations by extending the IMSRG method to include three-body operators, leading to more accurate predictions of calcium isotopes' properties and quantifying many-body uncertainties.

Contribution

The paper introduces the IMSRG(3)-$N^7$ method, enhancing the precision of nuclear structure calculations and uncertainty quantification over previous IMSRG(2) approaches.

Findings

Improved description of $^{48}$Ca's $2^+$ excitation energy.

Better shell closure representation at $N=28$.

Charge radii predictions remain systematically underestimated.

Abstract

The in-medium similarity renormalization group (IMSRG) is a powerful and flexible many-body method to compute the structure of nuclei starting from nuclear forces. Recent developments have extended the IMSRG from its standard truncation at the normal-ordered two-body level, the IMSRG(2), to a precision approximation including normal-ordered three-body operators, the IMSRG(3)-$N^7$. This improvement provides a more precise solution to the many-body problem and makes it possible to quantify many-body uncertainties in IMSRG calculations. We explore the structure of $^{44,48,52}$Ca using the IMSRG(3)-$N^7$, focusing on understanding existing discrepancies of the IMSRG(2) to experimental results. We find a significantly better description of the first $2^+$ excitation energy of $^{48}$Ca, improving the description of the shell closure at $N=28$. At the same time, we find that the IMSRG(3)-$N^7$ corrections to charge radii do not resolve the systematic underprediction of the puzzling large charge radius difference between $^{52}$Ca and $^{48}$Ca. We present estimates of many-body uncertainties of IMSRG(2) calculations applicable also to other systems based on the size extensivity of the method.