Abstract
Recent investigations have emphasized the importance of uncertainty quantification (UQ) in nuclear theory. We carry out UQ for configuration-interaction shell-model calculations in the valence space, investigating the sensitivity of observables to perturbations in the 66 parameters (matrix elements) of a high-quality empirical interaction. The large parameter space makes computing the corresponding Hessian numerically costly, so we compare a cost-effective approximation, using the Feynman-Hellmann theorem, to the full Hessian and find it works well. Diagonalizing the Hessian yields the principal components of the interaction: linear combinations of parameters ordered by sensitivity. This approximately decoupled distribution of parameters facilitates theoretical uncertainty propagation onto structure observables: electromagnetic transitions, Gamow-Teller decays, and dark matter-nucleus scattering matrix elements.
4 More- Received 19 February 2020
- Accepted 27 April 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.101.054308
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