Neutron matter, neutron pairing, and neutron drops based on chiral effective field theory interactions

• Main Author: Krüger, Thomas
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/5649/7/thesis_krueger_printed.pdf; Krüger, Thomas <http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/view/person/Kr=FCger=3AThomas=3A=3A.html> : Neutron matter, neutron pairing, and neutron drops based on chiral effective field theory interactions. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt [Ph.D. Thesis], (2016)

The physics of neutron-rich systems is of great interest in nuclear and astrophysics. Precise knowledge of the properties of neutron-rich nuclei is crucial for understanding the synthesis of heavy elements. Infinite neutron matter determines properties of neutron stars, a final stage of heavy stars after a core-collapse supernova. It also provides a unique theoretical laboratory for nuclear forces. Strong interactions are determined by quantum chromodynamics (QCD). However, QCD is non-perturbative at low energies and one presently cannot directly calculate nuclear forces from it. Chiral effective field theory circumvents these problems and connects the symmetries of QCD to nuclear interactions. It naturally and systematically includes many-nucleon forces and gives access to uncertainty estimates. We use chiral interactions throughout all calculation in this thesis. Neutron stars are very extreme objects. The densities in their interior greatly exceed those in nuclei. The exact composition and properties of neutron stars is still unclear but they consist mainly of neutrons. One can explore neutron stars theoretically with calculations of neutron matter. In the inner core of neutron stars exist very high densities and thus maybe exotic phases of matter. To investigate whether there exists a phase transition to such phases even at moderate densities we study the chiral condensate in neutron matter, the order parameter of chiral symmetry breaking, and find no evidence for a phase transition at nuclear densities. We also calculate the more extreme system of spin-polarised neutron matter. With this we address the question whether there exists such a polarised phase in neutron stars and also provide a benchmark system for lattice QCD. We find spin-polarised neutron matter to be an almost non-interacting Fermi gas. To understand the cooling of neutron stars neutron pairing is of great importance. Due to the high densities especially triplet pairing is of interest. We calculate the pairing gaps in neutron matter and provide uncertainty estimates. The formation of heavy elements in the early universe proceeds through the rapid neutron-capture process. This process requires precise knowledge of the properties of very neutron-rich nuclei, which are unstable and at present not accessible in experiments. Thus, one can explore their properties only with theoretical calculations. Currently the only approach to the properties of all nuclei are energy-density functionals (EDFs). All EDFs used today are based on phenomenological models and fits to stable nuclei, which makes their predictive power for unknown (neutron-rich) nuclei unclear. Deriving an ab initio EDF directly from the nuclear forces is an important goal of nuclear theory. A promising approach is the optimised effective potential (OEP) method. We take a step into that direction and calculate neutron drops within the OEP formalism. In addition to the exact-exchange approximation we study for the first time the effect of second-order contributions and compare to quantum Monte Carlo and other results.