Realistic Hamiltonians, with two- and three-nucleon potentials that reproduce NN scattering and the trinucleon binding energies, are quite complicated, with many different operator terms. When used with accurate quantum Monte Carlo many-body methods, the structure and reactions of light (A ≤ 12) nuclei can be reproduced extremely well. We have formulated progressively simplified versions of these forces, to study what terms are necessary to reproduce some key features of nuclear structure, like the absence of stable five- and eight-body nuclei. We have also studied the sensitivity of nuclear binding to the underlying hadronic masses. Both of these issues affect primordial nucleosynthesis and the long-lived stability of stars like our sun, and thus address the question of how “fine-tuned” our universe is.

Argonne Physics Division Colloquium Schedule