Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of Light Nuclei with Fully Propagated Theoretical Uncertainties
We report on the first quantum Monte Carlo calculations of helium isotopes with fully propagated theoretical uncertainties from the interaction to the many-body observables. To achieve this, we build emulators for solutions to the Faddeev equations for the binding energy and Gamow-Teller matrix element of 3 H, as well as for auxiliary-field diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of the 4 He charge radius, employing local two- and three-body interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory. We use these emulators to determine the posterior distributions for all low-energy couplings that appear in the interaction up to this order using Bayesian inference while accounting for theoretical uncertainties. We then build emulators for auxiliary-field diffusion Monte Carlo for helium isotopes and propagate the full posterior distributions to these systems. Our approach serves as a framework for ab initio studies of atomic nuclei with consistently treated and correlated theoretical uncertainties.
Authors
- Rahul Somasundaram (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0427-3893)
- Ryan Curry (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8013-2374)
- Stefano Gandolfi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0430-9035)
- Ingo Tews (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2656-6355)
- A. Schwenk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8027-4076)
- K. Hebeler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0640-1801)
- Alexandros Gezerlis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2232-2484)
Institutions
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (US)
- GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (DE)
- Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE)
- Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (DE)
- University of Guelph (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physics Letters B
- Published
- 2026-09-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2026.140908
- Primary Topic
- Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
- Canada Foundation for Innovation
- European Commission
- Alliance de recherche numérique du Canada
- Office of Science
- National Nuclear Security Administration
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Advanced Scientific Computing Research
- Laboratory Directed Research and Development
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- H2020 European Research Council