Diagrammatic ab initio methods for infinite nuclear matter with modern chiral interactions

Abstract

A comparative study of the equation of state for pure neutron matter and symmetric nuclear matter is presented using three ab initio methods based on diagrammatic expansions: coupled-cluster theory, self-consistent Green's functions, and many-body perturbation theory. We critically evaluate these methods by employing different chiral potentials at next-to-next-to-leading-order -- all of which include both two- and three-nucleon contributions -- and by exploring various many-body truncations. Our investigation yields highly precise results for pure neutron matter and robust predictions for symmetric nuclear matter, particularly with soft interactions. Moreover, the new calculations demonstrate that the $\rm{ NNLO_{sat} }(450)$ and $Δ\rm{NNLO_{go}}(394)$ potentials are consistent with the empirical constraints on the saturation point of symmetric nuclear matter. Additionally, this benchmark study reveals that diagrammatic expansions with similar architectures lead to consistent many-body correlations, even when applied across different methods. This consistency underscores the robustness of the diagrammatic approach in capturing the essential physics of nucleonic systems.