Ab initio methods help scientists understand complex particle collisions

Science

Newswise – When Nuclear nucleus And subatomic particles Negotiate, the results are incredibly complex. These are “many body problems” quantum mechanics, To help understand these interactions, scientists create ways to simplify the range of possible outcomes. An example is the “effective interaction”, which simplifies the interaction between a nucleon (a proton or a neutron) and an atomic nucleus. Effective interactions help scientists develop theories of the reactions that occur when nuclei collide with each other or with subatomic particles. These tools are part of a group of methods called effective field theory (EFT). EFT in turn is a type of approach called “ab initio” or “first principles”. Ab initio means that the calculation starts from the established laws of physics without any other assumptions. In the case of effective interactions, working ab initio means that physicists use consistent assumptions about the protons and neutrons in a nucleus to describe a nucleus before it interacts with any other particle, And after scattering from that nucleus, protons and neutrons can be described.

Effect

In ab initio studies, scientists use EFT to calculate how nucleons interact and scatter. EFT allows scientists to probe different energy levels for these interactions. They can also check different levels of accuracy for calculations. These calculations help scientists understand observations from experiments. Now, scientists have calculated the first nucleon-nucleon scattering using nucleon-nucleon interactions with EFT. They used statistical analysis to examine how much uncertainty the calculations generated. This will help scientists interpret how well the EFT approach works for different nucleon-nucleon interactions. This will also help them interpret the findings of physics experiments.

Summary

This study found that the diagnostic tools that scientists use to study atomic nuclei with only a few neutrons and protons can also be used to study the scattering of protons and neutrons from atomic nuclei. Is. In particular, the theoretical model on which this study is based gives a good description of the scattering of protons from carbon-12 and oxygen-16 at low energies, especially for scattering at greater forward scattering angles. Combining successful description of the nucleus with approaches to nuclear reactions using ab initio methods has been and still is a challenge in theoretical nuclear physics. Dealing with this challenge is an important task in today’s era Facility for Rare Isotope Beam,

Grant

This research was supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Nuclear Physics, and Advanced Scientific Computing Research Offices and the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program. Research was also supported National Energy Research Scientific Computing CenterA DOE Science Office user facility.