Triton binding energy with realistic statistical uncertainties

Abstract

We compute the binding energy of triton with realistic statistical errors stemming from NN scattering data uncertainties and the deuteron and obtain $E_t=-7.638(15) \, {\rm MeV}$. Setting the numerical precision as $\Delta E_t^{\rm num} \lesssim 1 \, {\rm keV}$ we obtain the statistical error $\Delta E_t^{\rm stat}= 15(1) \, {\rm keV}$ which is mainly determined by the channels involving relative S-waves. This figure reflects the uncertainty of the input NN data, more than two orders of magnitude larger than the experimental precision $\Delta E_t^{\rm exp}= 0.1 \, {\rm keV}$ and provides a bottleneck in the realistic precision that can be reached. This suggests an important reduction in the numerical precision and hence in the computational effort.