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SYNU: Symposium From QCD to Nuclei

SYNU 1: From QCD to Nuclei

SYNU 1.2: Plenary Talk

Tuesday, March 15, 2016, 09:45–10:30, S1/01 A1

Uncertainty quantification and nuclear forces — •Richard Furnstahl — Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Rapid improvements in many-body methods for nuclear structure and reactions are enabling new confrontations with data from present and future experiments, which include precise and reliable mass measurements, explorations to the limits of nuclear existence, and studies of fundamental symmetries and neutrinos. These confrontations require robust theoretical uncertainty quantification (UQ). Increasingly, a dominant source of uncertainty is the input Hamiltonian. This is spurring improvements to the chiral effective field theory (ChEFT) of nuclear forces, which seeks a faithful low-energy representation of quantum chromodynamics in the form of a controlled expansion. The error in a calculated observable from omitted higher-order terms in the ChEFT expansion is an example of a systematic theory uncertainty. I will survey recent developments and future prospects for the formulation and optimization of chiral nuclear forces and related advances in theoretical UQ, including the application of Bayesian parameter estimation and model selection.