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Exploring quark-mass-dependent three-nucleon forces in medium-mass nuclei

Urban Vernik1,2,*, Kai Hebeler1,2,3,†, and Achim Schwenk1,2,3,‡

  • *Contact author: urban.vernik@tu-darmstadt.de
  • †Contact author: kai.hebeler@tu-darmstadt.de
  • ‡Contact author: schwenk@physik.tu-darmstadt.de
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Phys. Rev. C 113, 064305 – Published 4 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/gcpw-cy14

Abstract

Recently, new quark mass dependent three-nucleon (3N) forces have been identified, whose contributions in nuclear matter exceed expectations of Weinberg power-counting arguments. In this work, we investigate the impact of the most dominant new interaction term, characterized by the coupling F2, in ab initio calculations of medium-mass nuclei. For this, we combine the new F2 interaction with established 3N interactions up to next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO) and next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO) in chiral effective field theory. We explore two fit strategies for the low-energy couplings. The first is based only on few-body observables, while the second also incorporates information from O16. Generally, we find that the F2 interaction has a significant impact on energies and radii, however mainly due to changes in the short-range couplings. Overall, we find no significant systematic improvements in the reproduction of medium-mass nuclei when the additional F2 interaction is included.

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Phys. Rev. C 113, 064305– Published 4 June, 2026
  • Received 8 January 2026
  • Accepted 4 May 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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