A consistent description of the relativistic effects and three-body interactions in atomic nuclei

A microscopic relativistic Hamiltonian containing consistent relativistic and 3N potentials is, for the first time, constructed based on the leading-order covariant pionless effective field theory, and this Hamiltonian is solved by developing a new accurate relativistic ab initio method with a novel symmetry -based artificial neural network for A <= 4 nuclei. It is found that the relativistic effects overcome the energy collapse problem for 3H and 4He without promoting a repulsive three-nucleon interaction to leading order as in nonrelativistic calculations. To exactly reproduce the experimental ground-state energies, a three-nucleon interaction is needed and its interplay with the relativistic effects plays a crucial role. The presented results open the new avenue for a unified and consistent study on relativistic effects and many-body interactions in atomic nuclei, and would also help to achieve more accurate ab initio calculations for nuclei.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3.

Automated summary

For the first time, a microscopic relativistic Hamiltonian is constructed based on the leading-order covariant pionless effective field theory and solved using a new relativistic ab initio method. The results provide insights into relativistic effects and many-body interactions in atomic nuclei.