Nuclear masses set bounds on quantum chaos

It has been suggested that chaotic motion inside the nucleus may significantly limit the accuracy with which nuclear masses can be calculated. Using a power spectrum analysis we show that the inclusion of additional physical contributions in mass calculations, through many-body interactions or local information, removes the chaotic signal in the discrepancies between calculated and measured masses. Furthermore, a systematic application of global mass formulas and of a set of relationships among neighboring nuclei to more than 2000 nuclear masses allows one to set an unambiguous upper bound for the average errors in calculated masses, which turn out to be almost an order of magnitude smaller than estimated chaotic components.