Ab initio calculations of reactions with light nuclei

¹ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-414, Livermore, California 94551 USA
² Institut de Physique Nucléaire, Universitée Paris-Sud, IN2P3/CNRS, F-91406 Orsay Cedex, France
³ TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 2A3, Canada
⁴ Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany

^a e-mail: quaglioni1@llnl.gov
^b e-mail: hupin@ipnorsay.in2p3.fr
^c e-mail: calci@triumf.ca

Published online: 25 March 2016

Abstract

An ab initio (i.e., from first principles) theoretical framework capable of providing a unified description of the structure and low-energy reaction properties of light nuclei is desirable to further our understanding of the fundamental interactions among nucleons, and provide accurate predictions of crucial reaction rates for nuclear astrophysics, fusion-energy research, and other applications. In this contribution we review ab initio calculations for nucleon and deuterium scattering on light nuclei starting from chiral two- and three-body Hamiltonians, obtained within the framework of the ab initio no-core shell model with continuum. This is a unified approach to nuclear bound and scattering states, in which square-integrable energy eigenstates of the A-nucleon system are coupled to (A−a)+a target-plus-projectile wave functions in the spirit of the resonating group method to obtain an efficient description of the many-body nuclear dynamics both at short and medium distances and at long ranges.