nuclear physics

Exact Calculation of Strongly Correlated Nucleonic Matter

arXiv:2508.09252 · doi:10.1103/q4p2-r1bt

summary

The paper presents exact ab initio calculations of infinite nucleonic matter using the full configuration‑interaction quantum Monte Carlo method, demonstrating strong correlations in symmetric nuclear matter and providing benchmarks for many‑body approaches.

Abstract

Dense nucleonic matter is of vital importance for understanding compact stars and inferring the transition into deconfined quark phase. We present exact calculations of infinite nucleonic matter with the state-of-the-art full configuration-interaction quantum Monte Carlo method, enabling us to rigorously benchmark many-body methods and assess the degree to which the nucleonic matter is correlated. Our method has been numerically validated against exact diagonalization within a small model space. Calculations of nucleonic matter using chiral nuclear forces reveal that symmetric nuclear matter is strikingly strongly correlated, raising questions on previous calculations of nuclear matter with many-body expansion truncations and offering insights into simultaneous descriptions of finite nuclei and infinite nucleonic matter from first principles.

6 pages, 4 figures, published version

Topics & keywords

#ab initio methods#nucleonic matter#quantum Monte Carlo#strong correlations#chiral nuclear forces#compact starsFCIQMCfull configuration‑interaction quantum Monte Carlochiral effective field theorysymmetric nuclear matterexact diagonalizationmany‑body expansion