Dean Lee

Ab initio calculation of the Hoyle state

The Hoyle state plays a crucial role in the helium burning of stars heavier than our Sun and in the production of carbon and other elements necessary for life. This excited state of the carbon-12 nucleus was postulated by Hoyle as a necessary ingredient for the fusion of three alpha particles to produce carbon at stellar temperatures. Although the Hoyle state was seen experimentally more than a half century ago nuclear theorists have not yet uncovered the nature of this state from first principles. In this Letter we report the first ab initio calculation of the low-lying states of carbon-12 using supercomputer lattice simulations and a theoretical framework known as effective field theory. In addition to the ground state and excited spin-2 state, we find a resonance at -85(3)  MeV with all of the properties of the Hoyle state and in agreement with the experimentally observed energy.

Lattice simulations for few- and many-body systems

Abstract We review the recent literature on lattice simulations for few- and many-body systems. We focus on methods that combine the framework of effective field theory with computational lattice methods. Lattice effective field theory is discussed for cold atoms as well as low-energy nucleons with and without pions. A number of different lattice formulations and computational algorithms are considered, and an effort is made to show common themes in studies of cold atoms and low-energy nuclear physics as well as common themes in work by different collaborations.

Lattice simulations for light nuclei: Chiral effective field theory at leading order

Abstract.We discuss lattice simulations of light nuclei at leading order in the chiral effective field theory. Using lattice pion fields and auxiliary fields, we include the physics of instantaneous one-pion exchange and the leading-order S-wave contact interactions. We also consider higher-derivative contact interactions which adjust the S-wave scattering amplitude at higher momenta. By construction our lattice path integral is positive definite in the limit of exact Wigner SU(4) symmetry for any even number of nucleons. This SU(4) positivity and the approximate SU(4) symmetry of the low-energy interactions play an important role in suppressing sign and phase oscillations in Monte Carlo simulations. We assess the computational scaling of the lattice algorithm for light nuclei with up to eight nucleons and analyze in detail calculations of the deuteron, triton, and helium-4.

Lattice effective field theory calculations for A = 3,4,6,12 nuclei

We present lattice results for the ground state energies of tritium, helium-3, helium-4, lithium-6, and carbon-12 nuclei. Our analysis includes isospin breaking, Coulomb effects, and interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory.

Ab Initio Calculation of the Spectrum and Structure of

We present ab initio lattice calculations of the low-energy even-parity states of 16O using chiral nuclear effective field theory. We find good agreement with the empirical energy spectrum, and with the electromagnetic properties and transition rates. For the ground state, we find that the nucleons are arranged in a tetrahedral configuration of alpha clusters. For the first excited spin-0 state, we find that the predominant structure is a square configuration of alpha clusters, with rotational excitations that include the first spin-2 state.

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The Hoyle state plays a crucial role in the helium burning of stars that have reached the red giant stage. The close proximity of this state to the triple-alpha threshold is needed for the production of carbon, oxygen, and other elements necessary for life. We investigate whether this life-essential condition is robust or delicately fine-tuned by measuring its dependence on the fundamental constants of nature, specifically the light quark mass and the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. We show that there exist strong correlations between the alpha-particle binding energy and the various energies relevant to the triple-alpha process. We derive limits on the variation of these fundamental parameters from the requirement that sufficient amounts of carbon and oxygen be generated in stars. We also discuss the implications of our results for an anthropic view of the Universe.

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Processes such as the scattering of alpha particles (4He), the triple-alpha reaction, and alpha capture play a major role in stellar nucleosynthesis. In particular, alpha capture on carbon determines the ratio of carbon to oxygen during helium burning, and affects subsequent carbon, neon, oxygen, and silicon burning stages. It also substantially affects models of thermonuclear type Ia supernovae, owing to carbon detonation in accreting carbon–oxygen white-dwarf stars. In these reactions, the accurate calculation of the elastic scattering of alpha particles and alpha-like nuclei—nuclei with even and equal numbers of protons and neutrons—is important for understanding background and resonant scattering contributions. First-principles calculations of processes involving alpha particles and alpha-like nuclei have so far been impractical, owing to the exponential growth of the number of computational operations with the number of particles. Here we describe an ab initio calculation of alpha–alpha scattering that uses lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We use lattice effective field theory to describe the low-energy interactions of protons and neutrons, and apply a technique called the ‘adiabatic projection method’ to reduce the eight-body system to a two-cluster system. We take advantage of the computational efficiency and the more favourable scaling with system size of auxiliary-field Monte Carlo simulations to compute an ab initio effective Hamiltonian for the two clusters. We find promising agreement between lattice results and experimental phase shifts for s-wave and d-wave scattering. The approximately quadratic scaling of computational operations with particle number suggests that it should be possible to compute alpha scattering and capture on carbon and oxygen in the near future. The methods described here can be applied to ultracold atomic few-body systems as well as to hadronic systems using lattice quantum chromodynamics to describe the interactions of quarks and gluons.

Viability of Carbon-Based Life as a Function of the Light Quark Mass

Abstract.We present lattice calculations for the ground-state energies of tritium, helium-3, helium-4, lithium-6, and carbon-12 nuclei. Our results were previously summarized in a letter publication. This paper provides full details of the calculations. We include isospin-breaking, Coulomb effects, and interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory.

Ab initio alpha–alpha scattering

Abstract We extend Nuclear Lattice Effective Field Theory (NLEFT) to medium-mass nuclei, and present results for the ground states of alpha nuclei from 4 He to 28 Si, calculated up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in the EFT expansion. This computational advance is made possible by extrapolations of lattice data using multiple initial and final states. For our soft two-nucleon interaction, we find that the overall contribution from multi-nucleon forces must change sign from attractive to repulsive with increasing nucleon number. This effect is not produced by three-nucleon forces at NNLO, but it can be approximated by an effective four-nucleon interaction. We discuss the convergence of the EFT expansion and the broad significance of our findings for future ab initio calculations.

Lattice calculations for A = 3 , 4, 6, 12 nuclei using chiral effective field theory

Abstract.We determine two-particle scattering phase shifts and mixing angles for quantum theories defined with lattice regularization. The method is suitable for any non-relativistic effective theory of point particles on the lattice. In the center-of-mass frame of the two-particle system we impose a hard spherical wall at some fixed large radius. For channels without partial-wave mixing the partial-wave phase shifts are determined from the energies of the nearly spherical standing waves. For channels with partial-wave mixing further information is extracted by decomposing the standing wave at the wall boundary into spherical harmonics, and we solve coupled-channels equations to extract the phase shifts and mixing angles. The method is illustrated and tested by computing phase shifts and mixing angles on the lattice for spin-1/2 particles with an attractive Gaussian potential containing both central and tensor force parts.