At present there are two vastly different ab initio approaches to the description of the the many-body dynamics: the Density Functional Theory (DFT) and the functional integral (path integral) approaches. On one hand, if implemented exactly, the DFT approach can allow in principle the exact evaluation of arbitrary one-body observable. However, when applied to Large Amplitude Collective Motion (LACM) this approach needs to be extended in order to accommodate the phenomenon of surface-hoping, when adiabaticity is strongly violated and the description of a system using a single (generalized) Slater determinant is not valid anymore. The functional integral approach on the other hand does not appear to have such restrictions, but its implementation does not appear to be straightforward endeavor. However, within a functional integral approach one seems to be able to evaluate in principle any kind of observables, such as the fragment mass and energy distributions in nuclear fission. These two radically approaches can likely be brought brought together by formulating a stochastic time-dependent DFT approach to many-body dynamics.
Through ab initio approaches in nuclear theory, we may now seek to quantitatively understand the wealth of nuclear collective phenomena starting from the underlying internucleon interactions. No-core configuration interaction (NCCI) calculations for p-shell nuclei give rise to rotational bands, as evidenced by rotational patterns for excitation energies, electromagnetic moments, and electromagnetic transitions. In this review, NCCI calculations of 7-9Be are used to illustrate and explore ab initio rotational structure, and the resulting predictions for rotational band properties are compared w…
Results for ab initio no-core shell model calculations in a symmetry-adapted SU(3)-based coupling scheme demonstrate that collective modes in light nuclei emerge from first principles. The low-lying states of 6Li, 8Be, and 6He are shown to exhibit orderly patterns that favor spatial configurations with strong quadrupole deformation and complementary low intrinsic spin values, a picture that is consistent with the nuclear symplectic model. The results also suggest a pragmatic path forward to accommodate deformation-driven collective features in ab initio analyses when they dominate the nuclear …
Working with Hamiltonians from chiral effective field theory, we develop a novel framework for describing arbitrary deformed medium-mass nuclei by combining the in-medium similarity renormalization group with the generator coordinate method. The approach leverages the ability of the first method to capture dynamic correlations and the second to include collective correlations without violating symmetries. We use our scheme to compute the matrix element that governs the neutrinoless double beta decay of $^{48}$Ca to $^{48}$Ti, and find it to have the value $0.61$, near or below the predictions …
Structural phenomena in nuclei, from shell structure and clustering to superfluidity and collective rotations and vibrations, reflect emergent degrees of freedom. Ab initio theory describes nuclei directly from a fully microscopic formulation. We can therefore look to ab initio theory as a means of exploring the emergence of effective degrees of freedom in nuclei. For the illustrative case of emergent rotational bands in the Be isotopes, we establish an understanding of the underlying oscillator space and angular momentum (orbital and spin) structure. We consider no-core configuration interact…
Ab initio nuclear theory provides not only a microscopic framework for quantitative description of the nuclear many-body system, but also a foundation for deeper understanding of emergent collective correlations. A symplectic Sp(3,R)$\supset$U(3) dynamical symmetry is identified in ab initio predictions, from a no-core configuration interaction approach, and found to provide a qualitative understanding of the spectrum of 7Be. Low-lying states form an Elliott SU(3) spectrum, while an Sp(3,R) excitation gives rise to an excited rotational band with strong quadrupole connections to the ground sta…
We discuss emulators from the ab initio symmetry-adapted no-core shell-model framework for studying the formation of alpha clustering and collective properties without effective charges. We present a new type of an emulator, one that utilizes the eigenvector continuation technique but is based on the use of symplectic symmetry considerations. This is achieved by using physically relevant degrees of freedom, namely, the symmetry-adapted basis, which exploits the almost perfect symplectic symmetry in nuclei. Specifically, we study excitation energies, point-proton root-mean-square radii, along w…
We calculate the leading corrections to jet momentum broadening and medium-induced branching that arise from the velocity of the moving medium at first order in opacity. These results advance our knowledge of jet quenching and demonstrate how it couples to collective flow of the quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions and to the orbital motion of partons in cold nuclear matter in deep inelastic scattering at the electron-ion collider. We also compute the leading corrections to jet momentum broadening due to transverse gradients of temperature and density. We find that these effects lead to …
Meaningful predictions for electric quadrupole (E2) observables from ab initio nuclear theory are necessary, if the ab initio description of collective correlations is to be confronted with experiment, as well as to provide predictive power for unknown E2 observables. However, converged results for E2 observables are notoriously challenging to obtain in ab initio no-core configuration interaction (NCCI) approaches. Matrix elements of the E2 operator are sensitive to the large-distance tails of the nuclear wave function, which converge slowly in an oscillator basis expansion. Similar convergenc…
There has been significant recent progress in solving the long-standing problems of how nuclear shell structure and collective motion emerge from underlying microscopic inter-nucleon interactions. We review a selection of recent significant results within the ab initio No Core Shell Model (NCSM) closely tied to three major factors enabling this progress: (1) improved nuclear interactions that accurately describe the experimental two-nucleon and three-nucleon interaction data; (2) advances in algorithms to simulate the quantum many-body problem with strong interactions; and (3) continued rapid …
Ab initio approaches to the nuclear many-body problem have seen their reach considerably extended over the past decade. However, collective excitations have been scarcely addressed so far due to the prohibitive cost of solving the corresponding equations of motion. Here, a numerically efficient method to compute electromagnetic response functions at zero- and finite-temperature in superfluid and deformed nuclei from an ab initio standpoint is presented and applied to $^{16}$O, $^{28}$Si, $^{46}$Ti and $^{56}$Fe. This work opens the path to systematic ab initio calculations of nuclear responses…
We present the formalism for consistently transforming transition operators within the in-medium similarity renormalization group framework. We implement the operator transformation in both the equations-of-motion and valence-space variants, and present first results for electromagnetic transitions and moments in medium-mass nuclei using consistently-evolved operators, including the induced two-body parts. These results are compared to experimental values, and--where possible--the results of no-core shell model calculations using the same input chiral interaction. We find good agreement betwee…
Ab initio anatomy of quadrupole correlations in $^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne
Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Metrology and Sensing, Sun Yat-Sen University（中山大学广东省量子计量与感知重点实验室）；Technische Universität Darmstadt（达姆施塔特工业大学）；CEA（法国原子能和替代能源委员会）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理研究所）
A new Skyrme functional devised to account well for standard nuclear properties as well as for spin and spin-isospin properties is presented. The main novelty of this work relies on the introduction of tensor terms guided by \textit{ab initio} relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock calculations of neutron-proton drops. The inclusion of tensor term does not decrease the accuracy in describing bulk properties of nuclei, experimental data of some selected spherical nuclei such as binding energies, charge radii, and spin-orbit splittings can be well fitted. The new functional is applied to the invest…
The goal of the present account is to review our efforts to obtain and apply a ``collective'' Hamiltonian for a few, approximately decoupled, adiabatic degrees of freedom, starting from a Hamiltonian system with more or many more degrees of freedom. The approach is based on an analysis of the classical limit of quantum-mechanical problems. Initially, we study the classical problem within the framework of Hamiltonian dynamics and derive a fully self-consistent theory of large amplitude collective motion with small velocities. We derive a measure for the quality of decoupling of the collective d…
We present an ab initio approach for the description of collective excitations and transition strength distributions of arbitrary nuclei up into the sd-shell that based on the No-Core Shell Model in combination with the Lanczos strength-function method. Starting from two- and three-nucleon interactions from chiral effective field theory, we investigate the electric monopole, dipole, and quadrupole response of the even oxygen isotopes from 16-O to 24-O. The method describes the full energy range from low-lying excitations to the giant resonance region and beyond in a unified and consistent fram…
We review the ab initio symmetry-adapted (SA) framework for determining the structure of stable and unstable nuclei, along with related electroweak, decay and reaction processes. This framework utilizes the dominant symmetry of nuclear dynamics, the shape-related symplectic Sp(3,R) symmetry, which has been shown to emerge from first principles and to expose dominant degrees of freedom that are collective in nature, even in the lightest species or seemingly spherical states. This feature is illustrated for a broad scope of nuclei ranging from helium to titanium isotopes, enabled by recent devel…
This contribution reviews the present status on the available constraints to the nuclear equation of state (EoS) around saturation density from nuclear structure calculations on ground and collective excited state properties of atomic nuclei. It concentrates on predictions based on self-consistent mean-field calculations, which can be considered as an approximate realization of an exact energy density functional (EDF). EDFs are derived from effective interactions commonly fitted to nuclear masses, charge radii and, in many cases, also to pseudo-data such as nuclear matter properties. Although …
Two important pieces of nuclear structure are many-body collective deformations and single-particle spin-orbit splitting. The former can be well-described microscopically by simple SU(3) irreps, but the latter mixes SU(3) irreps, which presents a challenge for large-scale, ab initio calculations on fast modern computers. Nonetheless, SU(3)-like phenomenology remains even in the face of strong mixing. The robustness of band structure is reminiscent of robust, pairing collectivity that arises from random two-body interactions.
An ab-initio method for determining the dynamical structure function of an interacting many--body quantum system has been devised by combining a generalized integral transform method with Quantum Monte Carlo methods. As a first application, the coherent and, separately, the incoherent excitation spectrum of bulk atomic 4He has been computed, both in the low and intermediate momentum range. The peculiar form of the kernel in the integral transform of the dynamical structure function allows to predict, without using any model, both position and width of the collective excitations in the maxon--r…
We place unprecedented constraints on recoil corrections in the $β$ decay of $^8$Li, by identifying a strong correlation between them and the $^8$Li ground state quadrupole moment in large-scale ab initio calculations. The results are essential for improving the sensitivity of high-precision experiments that probe the weak interaction theory and test physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). In addition, our calculations predict a $2^+$ state of the $α+α$ system that is energetically accessible to $β$ decay but has not been observed in the experimental $^8$Be energy spectrum, and has an importa…
Nuclear collectivity and the harmonic spectrum of two-body correlations
Institut de Physique Théorique, Université Paris Saclay, CEA, CNRS（巴黎萨克雷大学理论物理研究所）；Theoretical Physics Department, CERN（欧洲核子研究中心理论物理部）；INFN-TIFPA Trento Institute of Fundamental Physics and Applications（特伦托基础物理与应用研究所）；Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory（阿贡国家实验室物理部）；Computational Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory（阿贡国家实验室计算科学部）
New constraints for the nuclear equation of state at suprasaturation densities have been obtained by measuring collective particle flows in heavy-ion reactions at relativistic energies. Ratios and differences of neutron and hydrogen flows in 197Au + 197Au collisions at 400 MeV/nucleon were used in studies of the asymmetric-matter equation of state. The comparison with predictions of transport models favors a moderately soft to linear density dependence, consistent with ab-initio nuclear matter theories. Model predictions suggest that comprehensive data sets collected at higher bombarding energ…
We present an ab-initio calculation of the giant dipole resonance in 16O based on a nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction from chiral effective field theory that reproduces NN scattering data with high accuracy. By merging the Lorentz integral transform and the coupled-cluster methods, we extend the previous theoretical limits for break-up observables in light nuclei with mass numbers (A<=7), and address the collective giant dipole resonance of 16O. We successfully benchmark the new approach against virtually exact results from the hyper-spherical harmonics method in 4He. Our results for 16O reprod…
