Pionless effective field theory for atomic nuclei and lattice nuclei

We compute the medium-mass nuclei $^{16}$O and $^{40}$Ca using
pionless effective field theory (EFT) at next-to-leading order (NLO). The EFT interactions are regulated through discrete variable representation, of finite harmonic oscillator basis, in momentum space. This approach is designed to facilitate convergence of many-body calculations with respect to the size of the model space. The low-energy coefficients of the EFT interaction are adjusted to experimental data for light nuclei with mass numbers $A=2$ and $3$, or alternatively to results from lattice QCD at an unphysical pion mass of 806~MeV. We find that at NLO, $^{16}$O and $^{40}$Ca nuclei are bound with respect to decay into alpha particles. Binding energies per nucleon are $9-10$~MeV and $21-40$~MeV at pion masses of 140~MeV and 806~MeV, respectively.