Chiral Effective Field Theory's Impact on Advancing Quantum Monte Carlo Methods

Nowadays, interactions derived from chiral effective field theory are routinely used to describe nuclear systems ranging from atomic nuclei to the dense matter explored in the core of neutron stars with theoretical uncertainty estimates. In this talk, I will focus on the impact that chiral effective field theory interactions have played in advancing microscopic studies of atomic nuclei and the nuclear matter equation of state using quantum Monte Carlo methods.

In particular, I will show how to combine QMC calculations with data from astrophysical multi-messenger observations of neutron stars and from terrestrial experiments to improve our understanding of dense matter. I will show that constraints from heavy-ion collisions of gold nuclei at relativistic energies show a remarkable consistency with multi-messenger observations and provide complementary information on nuclear matter at intermediate densities. This work combines nuclear theory, nuclear experiment, and astrophysical observations, and shows how joint analyses can shed light on the properties of neutron-rich supranuclear matter over the density range probed in neutron stars.

LA-UR-23-20122