Medium-Mass Nuclei from Chiral Nucleon-Nucleon Interactions

We compute the binding energies, radii, and densities for selected medium-mass nuclei within coupled-cluster theory and employ a bare chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order. We find rather well-converged results in model spaces consisting of 15 oscillator shells, and the doubly magic nuclei ⁴⁰Ca, ⁴⁸Ca, and the exotic ⁴⁸Ni are underbound by about 1 MeV per nucleon within the coupled-cluster singles-doubles approximation. The binding-energy difference between the mirror nuclei ⁴⁸Ca and ⁴⁸Ni is close to theoretical mass table evaluations. Our computation of the one-body density matrices and the corresponding natural orbitals and occupation numbers provides a first step to a microscopic foundation of the nuclear shell model.