Ubirajara van Kolck - Böcker

This graduate-level text collects and synthesizes a series of ten lectures on the nuclear quantum many-body problem. Starting from our current understanding of the underlying forces, it presents recent advances within the field of lattice quantum chromodynamics before going on to discuss effective field theories, central many-body methods like Monte Carlo methods, coupled cluster theories, the similarity renormalization group approach, Green’s function methods and large-scale diagonalization approaches.Algorithmic and computational advances show particular promise for breakthroughs in predictive power, including proper error estimates, a better understanding of the underlying effective degrees of freedom and of the respective forces at play. Enabled by recent improvements in theoretical, experimental and numerical techniques, the state-of-the art applications considered in this volume span the entire range, from our smallest components – quarks and gluons as the mediatorsof the strong force – to the computation of the equation of state for neutron star matter.The lectures presented provide an in-depth exposition of the underlying theoretical and algorithmic approaches as well details of the numerical implementation of the methods discussed. Several also include links to numerical software and benchmark calculations, which readers can use to develop their own programs for tackling challenging nuclear many-body problems.

Effective field theory (EFT), a technique used extensively in particle physics, provides a framework for systematically describing nuclear systems in a way consistent with quantum chromodynamics, the underlying theory of strong interactions. Because it offers the possibility of a unified description of all low-energy processes involving nucleons, it has the potential to become the foundation of conventional nuclear physics.Since the early 1990's when Weinberg applied the techniques of EFT to multiple-nucleon systems, significant developments have been made. However, serious obstacles have also been encountered. This book contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Nuclear Physics with Effective Field Theory, held in the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory at Caltech on the 26th and 27th of February 1998, which specifically addressed those issues. Physicists from different areas of sub-atomic physics gathered in an attempt to arrive at a consistent power counting scheme for the nucleon-nucleon interaction, a first step toward dealing with few-nucleon systems and ultimately nuclear matter and finite nuclei.