Three-nucleon forces: implementation and applications to atomic nuclei and dense matter (Q822924)

This paper is a review of ab initio many-body calculations in relation to chiral effective field theory (EFT) for application in microscopical studies of atomic nuclei over a wide range of masses. This technique allows the systematical derivation of nucleon-nucleon (NN), three-nucleon (3N) and higher-body interaction. The report is foccussed on the implementation of 3N interactions in such a framework. After an introductory segment an entire section is dedicated to nuclear interactions and the chiral effective field theory with particular emphasize on 3N interactions. The next section is dealing with the representation of these interactions : momentum basis representation, partial-wave decomposition, introduction of spin- and isospin dependent interactions, decomposition and antisymmetrization, regularization and transformation of the interaction's matrix elements to harmonic oscillator basis. Section 4 concerns the actual incorporation of 3N interactions in the many-body framework with the keypoints of partial-wave series convergence and the normal oredering in nuclear matter and finite nuclei. In last section before concluding the review contains the most relevant applications of this technique : properties of nuclear matter in astrophysical context, ground-state, charge radii, spectra and electromagnetic response of finite nuclei, as well decay and complex scattering processes. Mathematical techniques employed in the theoretical framework are briefly presented at the end of the review and contain the conventions used in the evaluation of matrix elements of operators like the NN interaction or the three-body cyclic permutation, partial-wave decomposition and ordering of local 3N interactions. This paper is intended to a rather narrow range of readers, especially specialist in nuclear many-body physics, the exposition being centred more on numerical results and their graphical representation.