Tracing the evolution of nuclear forces under the similarity renormalization group

Abstract

I examine the evolution of nuclear forces under the similarity renormalization group (SRG) using traces of the many-body configuration-space Hamiltonian. While SRG is often said to "soften" the nuclear interaction, I provide numerical examples which paint a complementary point of view: the primary effect of SRG, using the kinetic energy as the generator of the evolution, is to shift downward the diagonal matrix elements in the model space, while the off-diagonal elements undergo significantly smaller changes. By employing traces, I argue that this is a very natural outcome as one diagonalizes a matrix, and helps one to understand the success of SRG.

6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (6)

• Chiral effective field theory and nuclear forces
• Similarity Renormalization Group for Nucleon-Nucleon Interactions
• In-Medium Similarity Renormalization Group for Nuclei
• Evolution of Nuclear Many-Body Forces with the Similarity Renormalization Group
• Coupled-cluster theory for three-body Hamiltonians
• Shell Model States in the Continuum

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Operator evolution from the similarity renormalization group and the Magnus expansion