Unmasking Hidden Wigner's Symmetry from First Principles

TL;DR

This paper provides evidence that internucleon forces from chiral effective field theory reveal a dominant Wigner symmetry, which can simplify nuclear structure calculations by focusing on key symmetry representations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the spontaneous emergence of Wigner's supermultiplet symmetry in ab initio nuclear models without prior assumptions, guiding more efficient many-body computations.

Findings

Most wave functions of light nuclei are concentrated in a few U(4) irreducible representations.

Wigner symmetry manifests without large-Nc QCD assumptions or nucleus-specific constraints.

Emergent symmetry suggests strategies to reduce many-body basis sizes in nuclear calculations.

Abstract

We present quantitative evidence that high-quality internucleon forces derived from $\chi$EFT exhibit a striking dominance of Wigner's supermultiplet symmetry, without invoking the large-$N_c$ limit of QCD or assumptions about specific nuclei. We trace the manifestation of this symmetry in nuclear structure using the \textit{ab initio} Symmetry Adapted Model (SAM) and identify suppressed spin-isospin polarizability. Our calculations show that a majority of $\rm ^4He$, $\rm ^6Li$, and $\rm ^6He$ wave functions is concentrated in a few $\rm U(4)$ irreducible representations, without imposing any \textit{a priori} constraints on the model space. This emergent feature points to a strategy for reducing explosive many-body bases of the NCSM while retaining physically important configurations needed to compute observables.