Microscopic optical potential for exotic isotopes from chiral effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper uses chiral effective field theory to compute microscopic optical potentials for exotic isotopes, revealing isospin inversion at certain energies and providing new insights into isospin asymmetry effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calculation of isospin-asymmetry dependence of optical potentials from chiral interactions, including first-time corrections to Lane parametrization.

Findings

Real isovector optical potential changes sign at 110-200 MeV.

No isospin inversion observed in imaginary potential up to 200 MeV.

Enhanced importance of corrections to Lane parametrization at low energies.

Abstract

We compute the isospin-asymmetry dependence of microscopic optical model potentials from realistic chiral two- and three-body interactions over a range of resolution scales $\Lambda \simeq 400-500$\,MeV. We show that at moderate projectile energies, $E_{\rm inv} = 110 - 200$\,MeV, the real isovector part of the optical potential changes sign, a phenomenon referred to as isospin inversion. We also extract the strength and energy dependence of the imaginary isovector optical potential and find no evidence for an analogous phenomenon over the range of energies, $E \leq 200$\,MeV, considered in the present work. Finally, we compute for the first time the leading corrections to the Lane parametrization for the isospin-asymmetry dependence of the optical potential and observe an enhanced importance at low scattering energies.