Microscopic optical potentials derived from ab initio translationally invariant nonlocal one-body densities

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic optical potential using ab initio nonlocal densities from the no-core shell model, improving predictions of proton scattering observables for light nuclei by accounting for nonlocality and center-of-mass effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to derive optical potentials from ab initio nonlocal densities, enhancing the accuracy of scattering predictions for light nuclei.

Findings

Nonlocal densities significantly affect differential cross sections.

Inclusion of nonlocality improves agreement with experimental data.

Center-of-mass removal impacts the optical potential calculations.

Abstract

We derive a microscopic optical potential for intermediate energies using ab initio translationally invariant nonlocal one-body nuclear densities computed within the no-core shell model (NCSM) approach utilizing two- and three-nucleon chiral interactions as the only input. The optical potential is derived at first-order within the spectator expansion of the non-relativistic multiple scattering theory by adopting the impulse approximation and using the same chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction as that used to compute densities. The ground state local and nonlocal densities of 4,6,8He, 12C, and 16O are calculated and applied to optical potential construction. The differential cross sections and the analyzing powers for the elastic proton scattering off of these nuclei are then calculated for different values of the incident proton energy. The impact of nonlocality and the COM removal is discussed. The use of nonlocal densities has a substantial impact on the differential cross sections and improves agreement with experiment in comparison to results generated with the local densities especially for light nuclei.