Drischler, Christian (2017)
Nuclear matter from chiral effective field theory.
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Ph.D. Thesis, Primary publication
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Item Type: | Ph.D. Thesis | ||||
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Type of entry: | Primary publication | ||||
Title: | Nuclear matter from chiral effective field theory | ||||
Language: | English | ||||
Referees: | Schwenk, Prof. Ph.D Achim ; Braun, Prof. Dr. Jens | ||||
Date: | November 2017 | ||||
Place of Publication: | Darmstadt | ||||
Date of oral examination: | 15 November 2017 | ||||
Abstract: | Nuclear matter is an ideal theoretical system that provides key insights into the physics of different length scales. While recent ab initio calculations of medium-mass to heavy nuclei have demonstrated that realistic saturation properties in infinite matter are crucial for reproducing experimental binding energies and charge radii, the nuclear-matter equation of state allows tight constraints on key quantities of neutron stars. In the present thesis we take advantage of both aspects. Chiral effective field theory (EFT) with pion and nucleon degrees of freedom has become the modern low-energy approach to nuclear forces based on the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics, the fundamental theory of strong interactions. The systematic chiral expansion enables improvable calculations associated with theoretical uncertainty estimates. In recent years, chiral many-body forces were derived up to high orders, allowing consistent calculations including all many-body contributions at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO). Many further advances have driven the construction of novel chiral potentials with different regularization schemes. Here, we develop advanced methods for microscopic calculations of the equation of state of homogeneous nuclear matter with arbitrary proton-to-neutron ratio at zero temperature. Specifically, we push the limits of many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) considerations to high orders in the chiral and in the many-body expansion. To address the challenging inclusion of three-body forces, we introduce a new partial-wave method for normal ordering that generalizes the treatment of these contributions. We show improved predictions for the neutron-matter equation of state with consistent N$^3$LO nucleon-nucleon (NN) plus three-nucleon (3N) potentials using MBPT up to third order and self-consistent Green's function theory. The latter also provides nonperturbative benchmarks for the many-body convergence. In addition, we extend the normal-ordering method to finite temperatures. Calculations of asymmetric matter require in addition reliable fit values for the low-energy couplings that contribute to the 3N forces. This was not the case for N$^3$LO calculations. We present a novel Monte-Carlo framework for perturbative calculations with two-, three-, and four-nucleon interactions, which, including automatic code generation, allows to compute successive orders in MBPT as well as chiral EFT in an efficient way. The performance is such that it can be used for optimizing next-generation chiral potentials with respect to saturation properties. As a first step in this direction, we study nuclear matter based on chiral low-momentum interactions, exhibiting a very good many-body convergence up to fourth order. We then explore new chiral interactions up to N$^3$LO, where simultaneous fits to the triton and to saturation properties can be achieved with natural 3N low-energy couplings. We perform a comprehensive Weinberg eigenvalue analysis of a representative set of modern local, semilocal, and nonlocal chiral NN potentials. Our detailed comparison of Weinberg eigenvalues provides various insights into idiosyncrasies of chiral potentials for different orders and partial waves. We demonstrate that a direct comparison of numerical cutoff values of different interactions is in general misleading due to the different analytic form of regulators. This shows that Weinberg eigenvalues also can be used as a helpful monitoring scheme when constructing new interactions. Furthermore, we present solutions of the BCS gap equation in the channels ${}^1S_0$ and ${}^3P_2-{}^3F_2$ in neutron matter. Our studies are based on nonlocal NN plus 3N interactions up to N$^3$LO as well as the aforementioned local and semilocal chiral NN interactions up to N$^2$LO and N$^4$LO, respectively. In particular, we investigate the impact of N$^3$LO 3N forces on pairing gaps and also derive uncertainty estimates by taking into account results at different orders in the chiral expansion. In addition, different methods for obtaining self-consistent solutions of the gap equation are discussed. Besides the widely-used quasilinear method we demonstrate that the modified Broyden method is well applicable and exhibits a robust convergence behavior. |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:tuda-tuprints-69845 | ||||
Classification DDC: | 500 Science and mathematics > 530 Physics | ||||
Divisions: | 05 Department of Physics 05 Department of Physics > Institute of Nuclear Physics 05 Department of Physics > Institute of Nuclear Physics > Theoretische Kernphysik |
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Date Deposited: | 01 Dec 2017 12:18 | ||||
Last Modified: | 01 Dec 2017 12:18 | ||||
URI: | https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/id/eprint/6984 | ||||
PPN: | 423516272 | ||||
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