Climbing the quantum ladder

Research Project, 2013 – 2017

Our first objective is to investigate the link between QCD and nucleonic degrees of freedom using effective field theories. The investigation of nuclear forces from chiral perturbation theory using a low cutoff scale is a key topic of this proposal. Secondly, a major outstanding problem in nuclear many-body theory is to actually calculate the properties of nuclei starting from the microscopic interactions between nucleons. This problem has two parts: First, the nucleon-nucleon interaction is complicated. Second, the nuclear many-body problem is very difficult to solve. This task is now becoming within the realms of possibility due to outstanding developments in quantum many-body theory and the current availability of enormous computing power. Finally, we will explore another longstanding frontier in low-energy nuclear physics: the exploration of the limit of nuclear stability. Using a combination of ab initio approaches and halo effective field theory we want to describe nuclear systems that are close to the breakup threshold and whose properties are very much affected by their proximity to the continuum.