Microscopic Optical Potentials from First Principles

$α$-nucleus optical potentials from chiral effective field theory $NN$ interactions

“…Since 4 He is a light and stable nucleus with an equal number of protons and neutrons, we make the approximation ρ p = ρ n . To describe the proton density, we consider three possibilities: a charge density obtained through electron scattering and parametrised as a sum of Gaussians in Ref.…”

“…For example, in Refs. [2][3][4][5], nucleon-nucleus optical potentials have been derived using chiral effective field theory (EFT) interactions as input.…”

“…To further test the validity of our approach, in this work we analyze elastic scattering involving the light nucleus 4 He, which, due to its zero spin-isospin nature and large binding energy, plays a key role in nuclear reactions as well as nuclear astrophysics [21][22][23]. To this end, we start this study by analyzing the symmetric 4 He-4 He collision, which is a relatively simple system from which we can draw conclusions on the interaction. We then extend our study towards much heavier targets, up to 4 He-120 Sn.…”

“…Due to the aforementioned interest of α scattering, we have selected experimental data to explore collisions involving nuclei for which we have reliable density profiles. Accordingly, we show results for the elastic-scattering at intermediate energies of six different systems: 4 He-4 He, 4 He-12 C, 4 He- 16 O, 4 He- 40 Ca, 4 He-48 Ca, and 4 He-120 Sn and compare our results with experimental data [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. In all cases, we test the sensitivity of elastic-scattering cross sections to the chosen N N interaction, the nuclear density, as well as the impact of the description of the imaginary part using dispersion relations.…”

“…We follow in Sec. IV with an analysis of results for heavier targets: 4 He-12 C, 4 He- 16 O, 4 He- 40 Ca, 4 He-48 Ca, and 4 He-120 Sn. Finally, we summarize and give an outlook in Sec.…”