Recent advances in solving the nuclear many-body problem with realistic Hamiltonians are reviewed and selected applications presented. The "ab-initio no-core shell model" achieves a level of precision approaching other methods and provides a non-perturbative scheme suitable for addressing strong interaction problems in other areas of physics. In particular, quantum field theory may be cast into a convenient Hamiltonian form that is addressable with these techniques from nuclear physics. Recent applications to simple quantum field theories and prospects for addressing QCD directly will be presented. Somewhat surprisingly, key questions concerning spontaneous symmetry breaking, topological solutions and phase transitions are addressed directly with these new methods.

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule