Eur. Phys. J. A (2015) 51: 169
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2015-15169-9

Review

Uncertainty quantification and propagation in nuclear density functional theory

¹ Nuclear and Chemical Science Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 94551, Livermore, CA, USA
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Francis Marion University, 29501, Florence, SC, USA
³ Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, Los Alamos, NM, USA
⁴ Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 60439, Argonne, IL, USA

^* e-mail: schunck1@llnl.gov

Received: 17 March 2015
Accepted: 1 April 2015
Published online: 23 December 2015

Abstract

Nuclear density functional theory (DFT) is one of the main theoretical tools used to study the properties of heavy and superheavy elements, or to describe the structure of nuclei far from stability. While on-going efforts seek to better root nuclear DFT in the theory of nuclear forces (see Duguet et al., this Topical Issue), energy functionals remain semi-phenomenological constructions that depend on a set of parameters adjusted to experimental data in finite nuclei. In this paper, we review recent efforts to quantify the related uncertainties, and propagate them to model predictions. In particular, we cover the topics of parameter estimation for inverse problems, statistical analysis of model uncertainties and Bayesian inference methods. Illustrative examples are taken from the literature.