Monte Carlo methods for the nuclear shell model

Abstract

We present novel Monte Carlo methods for treating the interacting shell model that allow exact calculations much larger than those heretofore possible. The two-body interaction is linearized by an auxiliary field; Monte Carlo evaluation of the resulting functional integral gives ground-state or thermal expectation values of few-body operators. The "sign problem" generic to quantum Monte Carlo calculations is absent in a number of cases. We discuss the favorable scaling of these methods with nucleon number and basis size and their suitability to parallel computation.