Speaker: Ubirajara van Kolck, Institut de Physique Nucl\’eaire d’Orsay and University of Arizona
When/Where: 3 PM, June 13, Room F-210

Abstract: Lattice QCD (LQCD) has started to produce first results for observables involving $A\le 4$ nucleons, albeit at unphysically large quark masses. Because the signal-to-noise ratio for correlation functions at large time scales unfavorably, simulations will, for the foreseeable future, be limited to large pion masses and to small A.

The larger distances involved in $A\ge 5$ nuclei and in nuclear reactions can be reached with effective field theories (EFTs) involving nucleons. Because an EFT includes all interactions allowed by the symmetries of QCD, it is guaranteed to produce the correct S matrix. Ignorance about details of the strong interactions is encoded in the strengths of interactions with an increasing number of derivatives. I will show how these parameters are determined by matching the EFT to LQCD, and then $A=5,6,16$ binding energies and nucleon-deuteron scattering are calculated from the many-body Schroedinger equation.