The strongly correlated nature of atomic nuclei makes it challenging to describe them from a microscopic viewpoint, i.e in terms of interacting, structure-less nucleons.
Current endeavors are focused on formulating theoretical frames in which one can reliably capture the physics due to nucleons correlations while maintaining a favorable numerical complexity. In this context, ab initio approaches crossed a mass frontier about 20 years ago, with the possibility to describe medium-mass nuclei from first principles, however only for doubly-closed shell systems. On the other hand, a DRF-DAM collaboration was established 10 years ago with the ambition of transferring the Energy Density Functional (an empirical microscopic many-body method applicable to the whole nuclear chart) know-how about nucleons correlations treatment towards the ab initio world. Novel ab initio approaches were born from this work, enabling the description of nuclear ground and excited states irrespectively of their closed/open-shell character [1,2]. In return, having ab initio many-body approaches expressed in a language very close to the Energy Density Functional one gives food for thought about non-empirical formulation of the latter [3,4].
[1] Multi-reference many-body perturbation theory for nuclei: I. Novel PGCM-PT formalism, Frosini, Duguet, Ebran, Somà, EPJA 58, 62 (2022).
[2] Zero-and finite-temperature electromagnetic strength distributions in closed-and open-shell nuclei from first principles, Beaujeault-Taudière, Frosini, Ebran, Duguet, Roth, Somà, PRC 107, L021302 (2023).
[3] Rooting the EDF method into the ab initio framework: PGCM-PT formalism based on MR-IMSRG pre-processed Hamiltonians, Duguet, Ebran, Frosini, Hergert, Somà, EPJA 59, 13 (2023).
[4] Addressing Energy Density Functionals in the language of path-integrals, Fraboulet, Ebran, accepted in EPJA.
