Building A Universal Nuclear Energy Density Functional (UNEDF)

During the period of Dec. 1 2006 – Jun. 30, 2012, the UNEDF collaboration carried out a comprehensive study of all nuclei, based on the most accurate knowledge of the strong nuclear interaction, the most reliable theoretical approaches, the most advanced algorithms, and extensive computational resources, with a view towards scaling to the petaflop platforms and beyond. The long-term vision initiated with UNEDF is to arrive at a comprehensive, quantitative, and unified description of nuclei and their reactions, grounded in the fundamental interactions between the constituent nucleons. We seek to replace current phenomenological models of nuclear structure and reactions with a well-founded microscopic theory that delivers maximum predictive power with well-quantified uncertainties. Specifically, the mission of this project has been three-fold: first, to find an optimal energy density functional (EDF) using all our knowledge of the nucleonic Hamiltonian and basic nuclear properties; second, to apply the EDF theory and its extensions to validate the functional using all the available relevant nuclear structure and reaction data; third, to apply the validated theory to properties of interest that cannot be measured, in particular the properties needed for reaction theory. The main physics areas of UNEDF, defined at the beginning of the project, were: ab initio structure; ab initio functionals; DFT applications; DFT extensions; reactions