Energy Dependent Separable Optical Potentials for (d,p) Reactions

TL;DR

This paper develops energy-dependent separable optical potentials for (d,p) reactions, enabling more accurate three-body nuclear reaction calculations involving complex, energy-dependent, and multichannel potentials, especially for heavier nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces a method to construct energy-dependent separable representations of complex, multichannel optical potentials for (d,p) reactions, improving the treatment of Coulomb and nuclear interactions.

Findings

Facilitates accurate three-body reaction calculations with complex potentials.

Enables better modeling of Coulomb effects in (d,p) reactions.

Supports studies involving heavier nuclei and nuclear excitations.

Abstract

An important ingredient for applications of nuclear physics to e.g. astrophysics or nuclear energy are the cross sections for reactions of neutrons with rare isotopes. Since direct measurements are often not possible, indirect methods like $(d,p)$ reactions must be used instead. Those $(d,p)$ reactions may be viewed as effective three-body reactions and described with Faddeev techniques. An additional challenge posed by $(d,p)$ reactions involving heavier nuclei is the treatment of the Coulomb force. To avoid numerical complications in dealing with the screening of the Coulomb force, recently a new approach using the Coulomb distorted basis in momentum space was suggested. In order to implement this suggestion separable representations of neutron- and proton-nucleus optical potentials, which are not only complex but also energy dependent, need to be introduced. Including excitations of the nucleus in the calculation requires a multichannel optical potential, and thus separable representations thereof.