Visible light exposure of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's Very Large Telescope, X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory & math reconstruction of dark matter location. D. Coe & J. Merten/ESO/NASA/ESA/CXC
Theory Seminar

Physics Theory Seminar with Christian Drischler on Two-Body Scattering

Christian Drischler (Hosted by Pastore) from Michigan State University's Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will be presenting the seminar "Efficient Emulators for Two-Body Scattering Using Eigenvector Continuation"

Emulators are computationally inexpensive algorithms capable of approximating exact model calculations with high accuracy. They have been game changers for rigorously quantifying uncertainties in nuclear observables predicted from chiral effective field theory using  Bayesian statistical methods. Without efficient emulators, such statistical analyses would be in most cases prohibitively slow.
 
In this Theory Seminar, I will discuss our recent work on developing fast & accurate emulators for two-body scattering observables using the Kohn and Newton variational principle combined with eigenvector continuation. I will demonstrate that eigenvector continuation allows for the construction of extremely effective trial wave functions (and trial matrices) for variational calculations of scattering and bound state observables. When the Newton variational principle is used to emulate the neutron-proton cross section with a modern chiral interaction as a function of 26 free parameters (i.e., low-energy couplings), it reproduces the exact calculation with negligible error and provides an over 300x improvement in CPU time.

Zoom link available upon request at physics@wustl.edu.
Post-docs and students' Q&A with the speaker starts at 2:15 pm. Contact Garrett King for the Q&A Zoom link.