Speaker
Christian Forssén
(Chalmers University of Technology)
Description
Predictive power requires the ability to quantify theoretical uncertainties. While it is true that theoretical error estimates are difficult to obtain, the pursuit thereof plays a pivotal role in science. Reliable theoretical errors can help to determine to what extent a disagreement between experiment and theory hints at new physics, and they can provide input to identify the most relevant new experiments. In this talk I will show that nuclear theory is at a stage where such questions can be addressed.
Chiral effective field theory can be used to systematically bridge the gap from low-energy quantum chromodynamics to nucleons and pions as effective nuclear-physics degrees of freedom. Following this avenue we have made the quantification of theoretical uncertainties possible through the incorporation of state-of-the-art statistical and computational tools. In particular, we employ two different approaches to determine the coupling constants of chiral nuclear interactions: (1) The simultaneous optimization of nucleon-nucleon, pion-nucleon and few-nucleon data, and (2) In-medium optimization for which binding energies and radii of selected isotopes of carbon and oxygen are also used as input data. I will present results from both of these different approaches that together provide important steps towards our understanding of nuclear forces.
Primary author
Christian Forssén
(Chalmers University of Technology)