202 FRIB Graduate Brochure

Scott Bogner
Professor of Physics
Keywords: Many-Body Theory, Computational Physics, Equation of State
Theoretical Nuclear Physics
About
• BS, Nuclear Engineering, University of Cincinnati,
1996
• PhD, Theoretical Physics, SUNY Stony Brook, 2002
• Joined the laboratory in July 2007
• bogner@FRIB.msu.edu
Research
My research focuses on applications of renormalization
group (RG) and effective field theory (EFT) methods to
the microscopic description of nuclei and nuclear matter.
EFT and RG methods have long enjoyed a prominent role
in condensed matter and high energy theory due to their
power of simplification for strongly interacting multi-scale
systems. More recently, these complementary techniques
have become widespread in low-energy nuclear physics,
enabling the prospect for calculations of nuclear structure
and reactions with controllable theoretical errors and
providing a more tangible link to the underlying quantum
chromodynamics.
The use of EFT and RG techniques substantially simplifies
many-body calculations by restricting the necessary
degrees of freedom to the energy scales of interest. In
addition to extending the reach of ab-inito calculations
by eliminating unnecessary degrees of freedom, many
problems become amenable to simple perturbative
treatments. Since a mean-field description now becomes
a reasonable starting point for nuclei and nuclear matter,
it becomes possible to provide a microscopic foundation
for extremely successful (but largely phenomenological)
methods such as the nuclear shell model and nuclear
density functional theory (DFT) that are used to describe
properties of the medium-mass and heavy nuclei.
My research program presents a diverse range of research
opportunities for potential PhD students, encompassing
three different (but interrelated) components that offer
a balance of analytical and numerical work: 1) in-medium
effective inter-nucleon interactions, 2) ab-initio methods
for finite nuclei and infinite nuclear matter, and 3) density
functional theory for nuclei.
interactions, constructing next-generation shell model
Hamiltonians and effective operators via RG methods, and
developing microscopically based density functional theory
for nuclei.
Selected Publications
Nonempirical Interactions from the Nuclear Shell Model:
An Update, S.R. Stroberg et al., Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci.
69, no. 1, (2019).
Microscopically based energy density functionals for
nuclei using the density matrix expansion, R. Navarro-
Perez et al., Phys. Rev. C 97, 054304 (2018).
Nonperturbative shell-model interactions from the inmedium
similarity renormalization group, S.K. Bogner et
al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 142501 (2014).
Ground-state energies of closed shell nuclei without
(top) and with (bottom) 3N forces at different resolution
scales {lambda}. 3N forces are crucial to reproduce the
experimental trend (black bars) in the calcium isotopes.
Topics that could form the basis PhD research in my group
include: calculating the equation of state and response
functions for nuclear matter from microscopic inter-nucleon
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