Intersections of nuclear physics and cold atom physics

Jonas Larson, Erik Sjöqvist, Patrik Öhberg

Anders Kastberg

Lucas Madeira, Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato

Shimpei Endo, E. Epelbaum, Pascal Naidon +3 more

Abstract This review article presents historical developments and recent advances in our understanding on the three-body forces and Efimov physics, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint encompassing nuclear physics and cold atoms. Theoretical attempts to elucidate the three-body force with the chiral effective field theory are explained, followed by an overview of experiments aimed at observing signatures of the nuclear three-body force. Some recent experimental and theoretical works in the field of cold atoms devoted to measuring and engineering three-body forces among atoms are also presented. As a phenomenon arising from the three-body effect, Efimov physics in both cold atoms and nuclear systems is reviewed.

John W. Negele, Erich W. Vogt

J. Carlson, Stefano Gandolfi, Alexandros Gezerlis

Quantum Monte Carlo methods have proven to be valuable in the study of strongly correlated quantum systems, particularly nuclear physics and cold atomic gases. Historically, such ab initio simulations have been used to study properties of light nuclei, including spectra and form factors, low-energy scattering, and high-momentum properties including inclusive scattering and one- and two-body momentum distributions. More recently they have been used to study the properties of homogeneous and inhomogeneous neutron matter and cold atomic gases. There are close analogies between these seemingly diverse systems, including the equation of state, superfluid pairing, and linear response to external probes. In this paper, we compare and contrast results found in nuclear and cold atom physics. We show updated lattice results for the energy of the homogeneous unitary Fermi gas and comparisons with neutron matter, as well as for the dependence of the cold atom energy on the mass ratio between paired particles, which yields insights on the structure of the ground state. We also provide new lattice and continuum results for the harmonically trapped unitary gas, again comparing neutron matter and cold atoms.