Uncertainty Quantification in Local Chiral Nuclear Interactions

Although the interaction between neutrons and protons can be understood in terms of quarks exchanging gluons, the implementation of such interaction for nuclear structure calculations remains out of computational reach. Instead, potential models are derived from effective field theories which provide an approximation to the actual interaction. Although these models have already been adjusted to fit experimental scattering data, the uncertainties in the adjustable parameters were not initially quantified. We have implemented previously derived potentials so that we can redo the optimization, this time propagating experimental uncertainties to potential parameters. To do this, we implemented the derivatives of scattering observables with respect to the adjustable parameters, and new fits have been made that allow us to calculate their covariance matrix. We have obtained the uncertainty on parameters of local chiral interactions that other researchers will be able to use to account for uncertainty in their own experimental analysis and theoretical nuclear structure calculations.