Recent advances in the quantification of uncertainties in reaction theory

Abstract

Uncertainty quantification has become increasingly more prominent in nuclear physics over the past several years. In few-body reaction theory, there are four main sources that contribute to the uncertainties in the calculated observables: the effective potentials, approximations made to the few-body problem, structure functions, and degrees of freedom left out of the model space. In this work, we illustrate some of the features that can be obtained when modern statistical tools are applied in the context of nuclear reactions. This work consists of a summary of the progress that has been made in quantifying theoretical uncertainties in this domain, focusing primarily on those uncertainties coming from the effective optical potential as well as their propagation within various reaction theories. We use, as the central example, reactions on the doubly-magic stable nucleus ${}^{40}$Ca, namely neutron and proton elastic scattering and single-nucleon transfer ${}^{40}$Ca(d,p)${}^{41}$Ca. First, we show different optimization schemes used to constrain the optical potential from differential cross sections and other experimental constraints; we then discuss how these uncertainties propagate to the transfer cross section, comparing two reaction theories. We finish by laying out our future plans.

28 pages, 7 figures, J Phys. G

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• Optimizing multilayer Bayesian neural networks for evaluation of fission yields
• Bayesian Data Fusion of Imperfect Fission Yields for Augmented Evaluations
• Statistical tools for a better optical model
• Prediction of (p,n) Charge-Exchange Reactions with Uncertainty Quantification
• Quantifying uncertainties due to optical potentials in one-neutron knockout reactions
• The complete quantification of parametric uncertainties in (d,p) transfer reactions
• Quenching of single-particle strength inferred from nucleon-removal transfer reactions on ${}^{15}$C
• First application of Markov Chain Monte Carlo-based Bayesian data analysis to the Doppler-Shift Attenuation Method
• Systematic study of the propagation of uncertainties to transfer observables
• Bayesian method for fitting the low-energy constants in chiral perturbation theory
• Uncertainty Quantification in Breakup Reactions