Description of light nuclei in pionless effective field theory using the stochastic variational method

Abstract

We construct a coordinate-space potential based on pionless effective field theory with a Gaussian regulator. Charge-symmetry breaking is included through the Coulomb potential and through two- and three-body contact interactions. Starting with the effective field theory potential, we apply the stochastic variational method to determine the ground states of nuclei with mass number $A\le 4$. At next-to-next-to-leading order, two out of three independent three-body parameters can be fitted to the three-body binding energies. To fix the remaining one, we look for a simultaneous description of the binding energy of ${}^4$He and the charge radii of ${}^3$He and ${}^4$He. We show that at the order considered we can find an acceptable solution, within the uncertainty of the expansion. We find that the EFT expansion shows good agreement with empirical data within the estimated uncertainty, even for a system as dense as ${}^4$He.

32 pages, 9 figures, RevTeX 4.1, minor corrections, one reference added, matches published version

References in corpus (4)

• A high-precision variational approach to three- and four-nucleon bound and zero-energy scattering states
• Local chiral effective field theory interactions and quantum Monte Carlo applications
• Power Counting of Contact-Range Currents in Effective Field Theory
• Effective field theory of 3He

Cited by in corpus (16)

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• Power counting in chiral effective field theory and nuclear binding
• Two- and three-nucleon contact interactions and ground-state energies of light- and medium-mass nuclei
• Few-nucleon matrix elements in pionless effective field theory in a finite volume
• Second-order perturbation theory for 3He and pd scattering in pionless EFT
• Clustering of Four-Component Unitary Fermions
• Effective field theory for deformed odd-mass nuclei
• Removing the Wigner bound in non-perturbative effective field theory
• A Vision for the Science of Rare Isotopes
• Exactness of the normal-ordered two-body truncation of three-nucleon forces
• NuLattice: Ab initio computations of atomic nuclei on lattices
• Toward scalable quantum computations of atomic nuclei