Essential elements for nuclear binding

WOS:000488071200093How does nuclear binding emerge from first principles? Our current best understanding of nuclear forces is based on a systematic low-energy expansion called chiral effective field theory. However, recent ab initio calculations of nuclear structure have found that not all chiral effective field theory interactions give accurate predictions with increasing nuclear density. In this letter we address the reason for this problem and the first steps toward a solution. Using nuclear lattice simulations, we deduce the minimal nuclear interaction that can reproduce the ground state properties of light nuclei, medium-mass nuclei, and neutron matter simultaneously with no more than a few percent error in the energies and charge radii. We find that only four parameters are needed. With these four parameters one can accurately describe neutron matter up to saturation density and the ground state properties of nuclei up to calcium. Given the absence of sign oscillations in these lattice Monte Carlo simulations and the mild scaling of computational effort scaling with nucleon number, this work provides a pathway to high-quality simulations in the future with as many as one or two hundred nucleons. (C) 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftGerman Research Foundation (DFG) [TRR 110]; BMBFFederal Ministry of Education & Research (BMBF) [05P15PCFN1]; U.S. Department of EnergyUnited States Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0018638, DE-AC52-06NA25396]; Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK)Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) [116F400]; Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) President's International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) [2018DM0034]; VolkswagenStiftungVolkswagen [93562]We thank A. Schwenk for providing the neutron matter results for comparison. We acknowledge partial financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (TRR 110, "Symmetries and the Emergence of Structure in QCD"), the BMBF (Grant No. 05P15PCFN1), the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0018638 and DE-AC52-06NA25396), and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK project No. 116F400). Further support was provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) President's International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) (grant No. 2018DM0034) and by VolkswagenStiftung (grant No. 93562). The computational resources were provided by the Julich Supercomputing Centre at Forschungszentrum Julich, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, RWTH Aachen, and Michigan State University