Quantum Monte Carlo approaches to nuclear and atomic physics

Abstract

Quantum Monte Carlo methods have proven to be valuable in the study of strongly correlated quantum systems, particularly nuclear physics and cold atomic gases. Historically, such ab initio simulations have been used to study properties of light nuclei, including spectra and form factors, low-energy scattering, and high-momentum properties including inclusive scattering and one- and two-body momentum distributions. More recently they have been used to study the properties of homogeneous and inhomogeneous neutron matter and cold atomic gases. There are close analogies between these seemingly diverse systems, including the equation of state, superfluid pairing, and linear response to external probes. In this paper, we compare and contrast results found in nuclear and cold atom physics. We show updated lattice results for the energy of the homogeneous unitary Fermi gas and comparisons with neutron matter, as well as for the dependence of the cold atom energy on the mass ratio between paired particles, which yields insights on the structure of the ground state. We also provide new lattice and continuum results for the harmonically trapped unitary gas, again comparing neutron matter and cold atoms.

20 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (23)

• Theory of ultracold Fermi gases
• Collective excitations of a degenerate gas at the BEC-BCS crossover
• Generalized Virial Theorem and Pressure Relation for a strongly correlated Fermi gas
• The Equation of State of a Low-Temperature Fermi Gas with Tunable Interactions
• Strongly paired fermions: Cold atoms and neutron matter
• Determination of the Superfluid Gap in Atomic Fermi Gases by Quasiparticle Spectroscopy
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculation of the equation of state of neutron matter
• Quantum Monte Carlo Simulations of the BCS-BEC Crossover at Finite Temperature
• Tomographic RF Spectroscopy of a Trapped Fermi Gas at Unitarity
• Thermodynamic Measurements in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
• Universal properties of a trapped two-component Fermi gas at unitarity
• Resonantly Interacting Fermions In a Box
• Cold neutrons trapped in external fields
• Equation of state of superfluid neutron matter and the calculation of ${}^1{S}_0$ pairing gap
• Polarization Measurements and the Pairing Gap in the Universal Regime
• BEC-BCS crossover and universal relations in unitary Fermi gases
• Unitary Fermi Gas in a Harmonic Trap
• Heavy-Light Fermion Mixtures at Unitarity
• Equation of state of low--density neutron matter and the ${}^1{S}_0$ pairing gap
• The ground state energy at unitarity
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of symmetric nuclear matter
• Total control over ultracold interactions via electric and magnetic fields
• Superfluidity and excitations at unitarity

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Chiral EFT based nuclear forces: Achievements and challenges
• Superfluid Fermi atomic gas as a quantum simulator for the study of neutron-star equation of state
• Relativistic Effects and Three-Nucleon Forces in Nuclear Matter and Nuclei
• From resonantly interacting fermions with effective range to neutron matter
• Predicting Energies of Small Clusters from the Inhomogeneous Unitary Fermi Gas
• Static response, collective frequencies and ground state thermodynamical properties of spin saturated two-component cold atoms and neutron matter
• Unitary $p$-wave Fermi gas in one dimension
• Machine-learning approach to finite-size effects in systems with strongly interacting fermions
• Path Integral Monte Carlo study of particles obeying quantum mechanics and classical statistics
• Cold atoms beyond atomic physics