Researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Dr. Rongzhe Hu, have developed a new method to study broad resonances in nuclear many-body systems. Their work, titled “Complex-energy eigenvector continuation for nuclear many-body broad resonances,” was recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Broad resonances are a unique phenomenon in nuclear many-body systems, where the energy levels are not sharply defined but instead spread out over a range of energies. These resonances are particularly challenging to study theoretically because they involve the continuum degree of freedom, which drastically increases the model space of calculations. This can lead to non-convergence or instability in computations.
To address this challenge, the researchers have extended the eigenvector continuation (EC) method to the complex-energy space. EC is an efficient method that predicts the solution of a large-space many-body problem within a small subspace. By using only a few bound and narrow resonance solutions as input in EC, the researchers can obtain the solution of a broad resonance.
The researchers applied the complex-energy EC to the broad resonances of several nuclear systems, including $^4$H, four-neutron $^4n$, $^6$He, and $^7$He. Their results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in treating broad resonances in open quantum systems of nuclei.
The practical applications of this research for the energy sector are not immediately clear, as the study is primarily focused on fundamental nuclear physics. However, a deeper understanding of nuclear many-body systems can contribute to the development of nuclear energy technologies, such as fusion and fission reactors. The methods developed in this research could also be applied to other areas of physics where broad resonances are present, such as condensed matter physics and quantum chemistry.
In summary, the researchers have developed a new method to study broad resonances in nuclear many-body systems, which could have potential applications in the energy sector. Their work was published in Physical Review Letters, a prestigious journal in the field of physics.
This article is based on research available at arXiv.