Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei using local chiral interactions

Predicting the emergence of nuclear properties and structure from first principles is a formidable task. A fundamental question is whether it is possible to describe nuclei and their global properties, e.g., binding energies, radii, transitions, and reactions, from microscopic nuclear Hamiltonians constructed to reproduce only few-body observables, while simultaneously predicting properties of matter, including the equation of state and the properties of neutron stars. Despite advanced efforts, definitive answers are not available yet.

In this talk, I will approach the problem by presenting quantum Monte Carlo results for nuclei up to A=16, obtained by employing local chiral interactions. Such interactions include consistent two- and three-nucleon potentials up to next-to-next-to-leading-order, and they have been fit to few-body observables probing the physics of light nuclei, with particular attention to T=3/2 physics. Our results show that such local chiral interactions give a very good description of the ground-state properties of nuclei (at least) up to ¹⁶O, while providing an equation of state of pure neutron matter compatible with astrophysical observations of neutron stars. Single- and two-nucleon momentum distributions and derived quantities have been used to explore short-range correlation effects, showing interesting connections with information extracted from lepton scattering experiments on nuclei.