Precision Nuclear Theory

Research Project, 2022 – 2025

Nuclear physics is at the center of our scientific endeavour to understand the universe. Fine details of the strong force between nucleons set the limits of the nuclear landscape and determine properties of massive neutron stars.
In addition, nuclear phenomena provide important tests of fundamental symmetries, and can be used to probe physics beyond the standard model. However, a systematic description of strongly-interacting matter at low energies with quantified uncertainties is still lacking.In this project we will apply Bayesian statistics within a nuclear-physics framework of chiral effective field theory and ab initio many-body methods to perform precision studies of low-energy nuclear interactions and observables at an unprecedented level of sophistication. Groundbreaking research will be made possible via the development of statistical tools such as iterative history matching, and the inclusion of all relevant sources of uncertainty---in combination with novel emulators that promise computational speedups up to astonishing eight orders of magnitude. The physics goals of this project are: (1) Ab initio modeling of nuclear observables with quantified uncertainties, and studies of their connection to properties of neutron stars; (2) High-precision predictions of form factors for nuclear beta decay in searches for physics beyond the standard model for which quantified theoretical uncertainties are absolutely critical for scientific progress.