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International audience; The Efimov window, or universal window, is a particular energy region in which few-body systems are loosely bound. Many characteristics of those systems are universal; their properties are largely independent of the particular interaction that produces the binding. This suggests the use of simple potential models characterized by few parameters to describe dynamical properties. Essentially, the potential parameters are set in order to reproduce a small number of data, and then the potential strength can be varied to explore the window. Among others, the Gaussian potential has been used to characterize the universal window. From calculations of the ground state and of the first excited state of three identical bosons using a Gaussian potential along the window, we determine what is called the gaussian-level function. This function is independent of the particular Gaussian potential used in this procedure. Moreover, it contains finite-range corrections which are of particular importance when theoretical predictions are compared to experimental data.

International audience; The Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the Kohn-Sham equations, which are at the basis of the density-functional theory, are reformulated in terms of a particular many-body density, which is translational and Galilean invariant and therefore is relevant for self-bound systems. In a similar way that there is a unique relation between the one-body density and the external potential that gives rise to it, we demonstrate that there is a unique relation between that particular many-body density and a definite many-body potential. The energy is then a functional of this density, and its minimization leads to the ground-state energy of the system. As a proof of principle, the analogous of the Kohn-Sham equation is solved in the specific case of He4 atomic clusters, to put in evidence the advantages of this formulation in terms of physical insights.

Neural-network quantum states have shown great potential for the study of many-body quantum systems. In statistical machine learning, transfer learning designates protocols reusing features of a machine learning model trained for a problem to solve a possibly related but different problem. We propose to evaluate the potential of transfer learning to improve the scalability of neural-network quantum states. We devise and present physics-inspired transfer learning protocols, reusing the features of neural-network quantum states learned for the computation of the ground state of a small system for systems of larger sizes. We implement different protocols for restricted Boltzmann machines on general-purpose graphics processing units. This implementation alone yields a speedup over existing implementations on multi-core and distributed central processing units in comparable settings. We empirically and comparatively evaluate the efficiency (time) and effectiveness (accuracy) of different transfer learning protocols as we scale the system size in different models and different quantum phases. Namely, we consider both the transverse field Ising and Heisenberg XXZ models in one dimension, and also in two dimensions for the latter, with system sizes up to 128 and 8 x 8 spins. We empirically demonstrate that some of the transfer learning protocols that we have devised can be far more effective and efficient than starting from neural-network quantum states with randomly initialized parameters., 13 pages, 11 figures

Universal behavior in few-boson systems close to the unitary limit, where two bosons become unbound, has been intensively investigated in recent years both experimentally and theoretically. In this particular region, called the unitary window, details of the interparticle interactions are not important and observables, such as binding energies, can be characterized by a few parameters. With an increasing number of particles, the short-range repulsion, present in all atomic, molecular, and nuclear interactions, gradually induces deviations from the universal behavior. In the present paper, we discuss a simple way of incorporating nonuniversal behavior through one specific parameter which controls the smooth transition of the system from a universal to nonuniversal regime. Using a system of $N$ helium atoms as an example, we calculate their ground-state energies as trajectories within the unitary window and also show that the control parameters can be used to determine the energy per particle in homogeneous systems when $N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$.

Efimov states are a sequence of shallow three-body bound states that arise when the two-body scattering length is much larger than the range of the interaction. The binding energies of these states are described as a function of the scattering length and one three-body parameter by a transcendental equation involving a universal function of one angular variable. We provide an accurate and convenient parametrization of this function. Moreover, we discuss the effective treatment of range corrections in the universal equation and compare with a strictly perturbative scheme., 13 pages, 5 figures

International audience; The large values of the singlet and triplet scattering lengths locate the two-nucleon system close to the unitary limit, the limit in which these two values diverge. As a consequence, the system shows a continuous scale invariance, which strongly constrains the values of the observables, a well-known fact already noticed a long time ago. For example, the triton binding energy is correlated with other observables such as the doublet nucleon-deuteron scattering length or the α-particle binding energy. Moreover, the low-energy dynamics of these systems is universal; it does not depend on the details of the nuclear interaction. Instead, it depends on a few control parameters such as the (large) values of the scattering lengths and the triton binding energy. Using a potential model in order to vary the values of the scattering lengths, we study the spectrum of A=2,3,4,6 nuclei in the region between the unitary limit and the point where the scattering lengths get their physical values. In particular, we analyze how the binding energies emerge from the unitary limit forming the observed levels.

When the binding energy of a two-body system goes to zero the two-body system shows a continuous scaling invariance governed by the large value of the scattering length. In the case of three identical bosons, the three-body system in the same limit shows the Efimov effect and the scale invariance is broken to a discrete scale invariance. As the number of bosons increases correlations appear between the binding energy of the few- and many-body systems. We discuss some of them as the relation between the saturation properties of the infinite system and the low-energy properties of the few-boson system., 6 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the XXII International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics (FB22) (Caen, France, July 2018)

International audience; The understanding of nuclear systems as composed of interacting nucleons has been considerably sharpened by the effective field theory (EFT) framework. The latter provides a link between the nuclear interaction and the underlying quantum chromodynamics, as the relevant degrees of freedom result, at least ideally, from a decimation process starting from fundamental quarks and gluons. Owing to chiral symmetry and the Goldstone bosons’ characters of the interchanged pions among nucleons, the properties of heavier nuclei can in principle be traced back to a restricted set of low-energy constants (LECs) to be determined in lighter systems in the framework of a systematic low-energy expansion. At smaller energy scales, in pionless EFT, the interactions simplify becoming of contact type. The low-energy expansion is organized differently, relying on the emergence of universal properties, characteristic of systems with large two-body scattering lengths. We will examine the two above schemes and discuss their relation, with the aim of devising viable power counting schemes for applications in nuclear physics.

In chiral effective field theory the leading order (LO) nucleon-nucleon potential includes two contact terms, in the two spin channels $S=0,1$, and the one-pion-exchange potential. When the pion degrees of freedom are integrated out, as in the pionless effective field theory, the LO potential includes two contact terms only. In the three-nucleon system, the pionless theory includes a three-nucleon contact term interaction at LO whereas the chiral effective theory does not. Accordingly arbitrary differences could be observed in the LO description of three- and four-nucleon binding energies. We analyze the two theories at LO and conclude that a three-nucleon contact term is necessary at this order in both theories. In turn this implies that subleading three-nucleon contact terms should be promoted to lower orders. Furthermore this analysis shows that one single low energy constant might be sufficient to explain the large values of the singlet and triplet scattering lengths., 5 pages, 3 figures

The universal behavior of a three-boson system close to the unitary limit is encoded in a simple dependence of many observables in terms of few parameters. For example the product of the three-body parameter $\kappa_*$ and the two-body scattering length $a$, $\kappa_* a$ depends on the angle $\xi$ defined by $E_3/E_2=\tan^2\xi$. A similar dependence is observed in the ratio $a_{AD}/a$ with $a_{AD}$ the boson-dimer scattering length. We use a two-parameter potential to determine this simple behavior and, as an application, to compute $a_{AD}$ for the case of three $^4$He atoms., Comment: presented at the 23rd European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics