This primer begins with a brief introduction to the main ideas underlying Effective Field
Theory (EFT) and describes how nuclear forces are obtained from first principles by introducing
a Euclidean space-time lattice for chiral EFT. It subsequently develops the related technical
aspects by addressing the two-nucleon problem on the lattice and clarifying how it fixes the
numerical values of the low-energy constants of chiral EFT. In turn the spherical wall method
is introduced and used to show how improved lattice actions render higher-order corrections
perturbative. The book also presents Monte Carlo algorithms used in actual calculations. In the
last part of the book the Euclidean time projection method is introduced and used to compute
the ground-state properties of nuclei up to the mid-mass region. In this context the
construction of appropriate trial wave functions for the Euclidean time projection is discussed
as well as methods for determining the energies of the low-lying excitations and their spatial
structure. In addition the so-called adiabatic Hamiltonian which allows nuclear reactions to
be precisely calculated is introduced using the example of alpha-alpha scattering. In closing
the book demonstrates how Nuclear Lattice EFT can be extended to studies of unphysical values
of the fundamental parameters using the triple-alpha process as a concrete example with
implications for the anthropic view of the Universe. Nuclear Lattice Effective Field Theory
offers a concise self-contained and introductory text suitable for self-study use by graduate
students and newcomers to the field of modern computational techniques for atomic nuclei and
nuclear reactions.
