Final Report for Nuclear Lattice Simulations with Chiral Effective Field Theory

The nuclear lattice program at North Carolina State University addresses the nuclear many-body problem by applying non-perturbative lattice methods directly to hadrons. In this approach nucleons are treated as point particles on a lattice with a lattice spacing between 1 and 4 fm. The low energy interactions of the nucleons are governed by effective field theory and the unknown operator coefficients are determined by fitting to few-body scattering data. By using hadronic degrees of freedom and concentrating on low-energy physics, it is possible to probe larger volumes, lower temperatures, and far greater numbers of nucleons than in lattice QCD. In some cases the sign/complex phase problem can even be completely eliminated