Analyzing the Nuclear Interaction: Challenges and New Ideas

Abstract

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This review presents some of the challenges in constructing models of atomic nuclei starting from theoretical descriptions of the strong interaction between nucleons. The focus is on statistical computing and methods for analyzing the link between bulk properties of atomic nuclei, such as radii and binding energies, and the underlying microscopic description of the nuclear interaction. The importance of careful model calibration and uncertainty quantification of theoretical predictions is highlighted.

Keywords

• nuclear interactions
• chiral effective field theory
• model calibration
• uncertainty quantification
• optimization
• Bayesian parameter estimation