Physics Letters B 786 (2018) 448–452
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Open-shell nuclei from No-Core Shell Model with perturbative
improvement
Alexander Tichai
a,b,∗
, Eskendr Gebrerufael
b
, Klaus Vobig
b
, Robert Roth
b
a
ESNT, CEA Saclay, IRFU/Service de Physique Nucléaire, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
b
Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Schlossgartenstr. 2, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
7 May 2018
Received
in revised form 11 October 2018
Accepted
16 October 2018
Available
online 19 October 2018
Editor:
J.-P. Blaizot
Keywords:
Perturbation
theory
Ab
initio
Many-body
theory
We introduce a hybrid many-body approach that combines the flexibility of the No-Core Shell Model
(NCSM) with the efficiency of Multi-Configurational Perturbation Theory (MCPT) to compute ground-
and
excited-state energies in arbitrary open-shell nuclei in large model spaces. The NCSM in small
model spaces is used to define a multi-determinantal reference state that contains the most important
multi-particle multi-hole correlations and a subsequent second-order MCPT correction is used to capture
additional correlation effects from a large model space. We apply this new ab initio approach for the
calculation of ground-state and excitation energies of even and odd-mass carbon, oxygen, and fluorine
isotopes and compare to large-scale NCSM calculations that are computationally much more expensive.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
The solution of the nuclear many-body problem with realis-
tic
interactions is at the heart of ab initio nuclear structure the-
ory.
In recent years tremendous progress has been made in the
ab initio description of nuclear observables, particularly in the
regime of medium-mass nuclei beyond the p-shell. Innovative ap-
proaches
like Coupled Cluster (CC) theory [1–6], In-Medium Sim-
ilarity
Renormalization Group (IM-SRG) [7–11], or Self-Consistent
Green’s function (SCGF) [12,13]have been established and provide
accurate descriptions of ground-states observables. In a previous
work we have shown that many-body perturbation theory (MBPT)
with Hartree–Fock single-particle orbitals yields rapidly convergent
perturbation series and that low-order partial sums are in agree-
ment
with state-of-the-art CC calculations [14], thus, adding to the
collection of efficient medium-mass methods.
Despite
all the progress, the description of fully open-shell
medium-mass systems remains a challenge. The aforementioned
methods, in their basic formulation, are limited to ground states
of nuclei with closed sub-shells. The ground state of these nuclei
is dominated by a single Slater determinant that can serve as a
reference state for the construction of the fully correlated eigen-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
addresses: alexander.tichai@cea.fr (A. Tichai),
eskendr.gebrerufael@physik.tu-darmstadt.de (E. Gebrerufael),
klaus.vobig@physik.tu-darmstadt.de (K. Vobig), robert.roth@physik.tu-darmstadt.de
(R. Roth).
state. Several extensions have been developed to expand the range
of the single-determinant methods. Isotopes in the vicinity of shell
closures can be tackled by equation-of-motion techniques build on
the ground state of a neighbouring closed-shell nucleus [4]. Fur-
ther
away from shell closures, traditional shell-model approaches,
build on a closed-shell core and a small valence-space, combined
with non-perturbative valence-space interactions derived from ei-
ther
CC [15]or IM-SRG [16,17]have been used successfully.
An
important step towards a full no-core description of open-
shell
nuclei with multi-determinantal reference states is the
multi-reference formulation of the IM-SRG [11]. First applications
used particle-number projected Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov refer-
ence
states for even-mass isotopes in semi-magic chains [18–20].
Moreover, we merged the multi-reference IM-SRG with the No-
Core
Shell Model (NCSM) [21–23]to address arbitrary even-mass
isotopes and excited states [24]. These methods are powerful and
efficient but far from trivial, both, conceptually and algorithmi-
cally.
Recently, the concept of symmetry breaking has also been
applied in the framework of perturbation theory and first ap-
plications
of particle-number-broken Bogoliubov MBPT have been
discussed [25].
In
this paper we present a much simpler approach, a combina-
tion
of the NCSM in small model spaces with a low-order MBPT
correction to capture correlations from a large space. This hybrid
method, for the first time, allows to calculate nuclear ground-state
and excitation energies for all open-shell systems in large no-core
model spaces. After defining the Hamiltonian, we review multi-
configurational
perturbation theory and discuss the combination
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2018.10.029
0370-2693/
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.