Variational calculation of the ground state of closed-shell nuclei up to $A=40$

Understand

Variational calculations of ground-state properties of $^4$He, $^{16}$O, and $^{40}$Ca are carried out employing realistic phenomenological two- and three-nucleon potentials.

• The trial wave function includes two- and three-body correlations acting on a product of single-particle determinants.
• Expectation values are evaluated with a cluster expansion for the spin-isospin dependent correlations considering up to five-body cluster terms.
• The optimal wave function is obtained by minimizing the energy expectation value over a set of up to 20 parameters by means of a nonlinear optimization library.