Ab initio pathway to deformed nuclei

Introduction

Nuclear physics is one of the main drivers for extending our current understanding of Nature, its fundamental forces, and the organization of compound systems on subatomic scales. The description of atomic nuclei and nuclear matter connects microscopic systems to astrophysics and the origin of elements, bridging orders of magnitudes in energy scales.

Importance of Nuclear Phenomenology

A precise understanding of the rich nuclear phenomenology and their emergence from the interaction between neutrons and protons impacts various facets of contemporary physics. Despite tremendous progress over the past decades, a fully controlled description of nuclei throughout the entire nuclear chart is still lacking.

Challenges in Current Research

In particular, many experimentally relevant nuclei reveal exotic shapes and strong deformation where nuclear physicists still rely on the use of phenomenological approaches based on uncontrolled approximations with limited predictive power beyond the regions where they have been adjusted.

Project Objectives

In my project, I will develop new technologies to target deformed nuclei using nuclear interactions derived from chiral effective field theory and study the impact of interaction models on the predicted nuclear shapes.

Methodology

Combined with an uncertainty quantification of many-body observables, this allows for unprecedented predictions of nuclei far away from shell closures – significantly extending the scope of first principles nuclear structure calculations.

Research Challenges

The novelty and challenge of the proposed research lies in:

1. The design of many-body frameworks applicable to deformed nuclei.
2. Statistical analyses for uncertainty quantification.
3. The establishment of tensor network approaches in ab initio simulations.

Research Questions

This array of developments puts me in the unique position to tackle the following big research questions:

• How does nuclear deformation emerge in a first-principles approach?
• What are the overall uncertainties associated with an ab initio computation?
• What is the most efficient way of describing exotic nuclei?