Nuclear-matter saturation and symmetry energy within Δ -full chiral effective field theory

Abstract

Nuclear saturation and the symmetry energy are key properties of low-energy nuclear physics that depend on fine details of the nuclear interaction. The equation of state around saturation is also an important anchor for extrapolations to higher densities and studies of neutron stars. Here we develop a unified statistical framework that uses realistic nuclear forces to link the theoretical modeling of finite nuclei and infinite nuclear matter. We construct fast and accurate emulators for nuclear-matter observables and employ an iterative history-matching approach to explore and reduce the enormous parameter domain of Δ-full chiral interactions. We perform rigorous uncertainty quantification and find that model calibration including O16 observables gives saturation predictions that are more precise than those that only use few-body data. Published by the American Physical Society 2024