Chiral symmetry and peripheral neutron-$\alpha$ scattering

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate that peripheral neutron-$\alpha$ scattering at low energies can serve as a sensitive and clean probe of the long-range three-nucleon forces. To this aim, we perform {\it ab initio} quantum Monte Carlo calculations using two- and three-nucleon interactions derived in chiral effective field theory up to third expansion order. We show that the longest-range three-nucleon force stemming from the two-pion exchange plays a crucial role in the proper description of the neutron-$\alpha$ $D$-wave phase shifts. Our Letter reveals the predictive power of chiral symmetry in the few-body sector and opens a new direction for probing and constraining three-nucleon forces.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (48)

• Modern Theory of Nuclear Forces
• Chiral effective field theory and nuclear forces
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of nuclei with A \leq 7
• Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of $A\le 6$ Nuclei
• The two-nucleon system at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order
• Three-Nucleon Forces from Chiral Effective Field Theory
• Nuclear effective field theory: status and perspectives
• The R-matrix theory
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of A=8 nuclei
• Peripheral Nucleon-Nucleon Phase Shifts and Chiral Symmetry
• Precision nucleon-nucleon potential at fifth order in the chiral expansion
• Three-body forces: From cold atoms to nuclei
• Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations with Chiral Effective Field Theory Interactions
• Semilocal momentum-space regularized chiral two-nucleon potentials up to fifth order
• Chiral Three-Nucleon Interactions in Light Nuclei, Neutron-$\alpha$ Scattering, and Neutron Matter
• Subleading contributions to the chiral three-nucleon force I: long-range terms
• Local chiral effective field theory interactions and quantum Monte Carlo applications
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of neutron-alpha scattering
• 50 Years of Quantum Chromodynamics
• Unified ab initio approaches to nuclear structure and reactions
• Signatures of three-nucleon interactions in few-nucleon systems
• Backflow Transformations via Neural Networks for Quantum Many-Body Wave-Functions
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of neutron matter with chiral three-body forces
• Chiral 2pi exchange at order four and peripheral NN scattering
• Pion-nucleon scattering inside the Mandelstam triangle
• Chiral three-nucleon force at N^4LO I: Longest-range contributions
• A recipe for EFT uncertainty quantification in nuclear physics
• Variational Monte Carlo calculations of $\mathbf{A}\le 4$ nuclei with an artificial neural-network correlator ansatz
• Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei with local chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions
• Towards high-order calculations of three-nucleon scattering in chiral effective field theory
• Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering in a Harmonic Potential
• Solution of n-${}^4$He elastic scattering problem using Faddeev-Yakubovsky equations
• Description of Four- and Five-Nucleon Systems by Solving Faddeev-Yakubovsky Equations in Configuration Space
• Quantifying uncertainties in neutron-alpha scattering with chiral nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon forces
• On the effectiveness of effective field theory in peripheral nucleon-nucleon scattering
• Nucleon-$\alpha$ Scattering and Resonances in ${}^5$He and ${}^5$Li with JISP16 and Daejeon16 $NN$ interactions
• Nuclei with up to $\mathbf{A}=6$ nucleons with artificial neural network wave functions
• Deep-neural-network approach to solving the ab initio nuclear structure problem
• Ab initio calculations of low-energy nuclear scattering using confining potential traps
• Relativistic effects and three-body interactions in atomic nuclei
• Extracting free-space observables from trapped interacting clusters
• The two-atom energy spectrum in a harmonic trap near a Feshbach resonance at higher partial waves
• Efficacy of the symmetry-adapted basis for ab initio nucleon-nucleus interactions for light- and intermediate-mass nuclei
• Five-body calculation of $s$-wave $n$-${}^4$He scattering at next-to-leading order pionless effective field theory
• Three-body forces and Efimov physics in nuclei and atoms
• Reconciling light nuclei and nuclear matter: relativistic $abinitio$ calculations
• Exact restoration of Galilei invariance in density functional calculations with quantum Monte Carlo
• Peripheral N$\alpha$ Scattering: A Tool For Identifying The Two Pion Exchange Component Of The NN Potential

Cited by in corpus (2)

• DeepQuark: A Deep-Neural-Network Approach to Multiquark Bound States
• Efficient emulation of nuclear ground states with neural-network variational Monte Carlo and eigenvector continuation