Multiscale Physics of Atomic Nuclei from First Principles

Atomic nuclei exhibit multiple energy scales ranging from hundreds of MeV in binding energies to fractions of an MeV for low-lying collective excitations. As the limits of nuclear binding are approached near the neutron and proton drip lines, traditional shell structure starts to melt with an onset of deformation and an emergence of coexisting shapes. It is a long-standing challenge to describe this multiscale physics starting from nuclear forces with roots in quantum chromodynamics. Here, we achieve this within a unified and nonperturbative quantum many-body framework that captures both short- and long-range correlations starting from modern nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon forces from chiral effective field theory. The short-range (dynamic) correlations which account for the bulk of the binding energy are included within a symmetry-breaking framework, while long-range (static) correlations (and fine details about the collective structure) are included by employing symmetry projection techniques. Our calculations accurately reproduce—within theoretical error bars—available experimental data for low-lying collective states and the electromagnetic quadrupole transitions in Ne20−30. In addition, we reveal coexisting spherical and deformed shapes in Ne30, which indicates the breakdown of the magic neutron number N=20 as the key nucleus O28 is approached, and we predict that the drip line nuclei Ne32,34 are strongly deformed and collective. By developing reduced-order models for symmetry-projected states, we perform a global sensitivity analysis and find that the subleading singlet S-wave contact and a pion-nucleon coupling strongly impact nuclear deformation in chiral effective field theory. The techniques developed in this work clarify how microscopic nuclear forces generate the multiscale physics of nuclei spanning collective phenomena as well as short-range correlations and allow one to capture emergent and dynamical phenomena in finite fermion systems such as atom clusters, molecules, and atomic nuclei. Published by the American Physical Society 2025