Ab initio calculations of reactions with light nuclei

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.