Infrared and ultraviolet cutoffs in variational calculations with a harmonic oscillator basis

Abstract

I abstract from a recent publication [1] the motivations for, analysis in and conclusions of a study of the ultraviolet and infrared momentum regulators induced by the necessary truncation of the model spaces formed by a variational trial wave function. This trial function is built systematically from a complete set of many-body basis states based upon three-dimensional harmonic oscillator (HO) functions. Each model space is defined by a truncation of the expansion characterized by a counting number (N) and by the intrinsic scale ($\hbar\omega$) of the HO basis. Extending both the uv cutoff to infinity and the ir cutoff to zero is prescribed for a converged calculation. In [1] we established practical procedures which utilize these regulators to obtain the extrapolated result from sequences of calculations with model spaces. Finally, I update this subject by mentioning recent work on our extrapolation prescriptions which have appeared since the submission of [1]. The numerical example chosen for this contribution consists of calculations of the ground state energy of the triton with the "bare" and "soft" Idaho N3LO nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction.