Speaker
Dr
Daniel Gazda
(Nuclear Physics Institute Řež/Prague)
Description
In this contribution I will report on quantification of theoretical uncertainties in nuclear matrix elements relevant for dark matter and electro-weak interactions with nuclei. Recently we have developed a novel ab initio framework for computations of nuclear matrix elements [1] and applied it in calculations of reaction rates for dark matter particles scattering off selected nuclear targets relevant for dark matter direct detection experiments. To evaluate the nuclear matrix elements we used nuclear wave functions computed within an ab initio many-body framework employing state-of-the-art nuclear Hamiltonians derived from chiral effective field theory. For the first time, we have quantified the uncertainties of nuclear matrix elements that result from the remaining freedom in the construction of realistic nuclear interactions and the impact of such nuclear-physics uncertainties on physical observables. In particular, we found significant uncertainties especially for certain spin-dependent nuclear matrix elements. While our nuclear structure calculations have been performed with the no-core shell model and applied in the context of dark matter searches, the approach can be generalized to other ab initio methods and extended to other sectors, such as to study the electro-weak interactions in nuclei.
[1] D. Gazda, R. Catena, C. Forssén, Ab initio nuclear response functions for dark matter searches, Phys. Rev. D 95, 103011 (2017).
