Effects of chiral three-nucleon forces on $^{4}$He-nucleus scattering in a wide range of incident energies

TL;DR

This study explores how chiral three-nucleon forces influence $^{4}$He elastic scattering across a wide energy range, revealing their significant impact on scattering observables and improving agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of chiral 3NFs effects on $^{4}$He scattering using the $g$-matrix folding model, highlighting their energy-dependent influence and cutoff dependence.

Findings

Chiral 3NFs make the single-particle potential less attractive and more absorptive.

Effects of chiral 3NFs become prominent at incident energies above 60 MeV per nucleon.

The folding model with chiral 3NFs reproduces experimental differential cross sections well at high energies.

Abstract

It is a current important subject to clarify properties of chiral three-nucleon forces (3NFs) not only in nuclear matter but also in scattering between finite-size nuclei. Particularly for the elastic scattering, this study has just started and the properties are not understood in a wide range of incident energies ($E_{\rm in}$). We investigate basic properties of chiral 3NFs in nuclear matter with positive energies by using the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock method with chiral two-nucleon forces of N$^{3}$LO and 3NFs of NNLO, and analyze effects of chiral 3NFs on $^{4}$He elastic scattering from targets $^{208}$Pb, $^{58}$Ni and $^{40}$Ca over a wide range of $30 \lesssim E_{\rm in}/A_{\rm P} \lesssim 200$ MeV by using the $g$-matrix folding model, where $A_{\rm P}$ is the mass number of projectile. In symmetric nuclear matter with positive energies, chiral 3NFs make the single-particle potential less attractive and more absorptive. The effects mainly come from the Fujita-Miyazawa 2$\pi$-exchange 3NF and slightly become larger as $E_{\rm in}$ increases. These effects persist in the optical potentials of $^{4}$He scattering. As for the differential cross sections of $^{4}$He scattering, chiral-3NF effects are large in $E_{\rm in}/A_{\rm P} \gtrsim 60$ MeV and improve the agreement of the theoretical results with the measured ones. Particularly in $E_{\rm in}/A_{\rm P} \gtrsim 100$ MeV, the folding model reproduces measured differential cross sections pretty well. Cutoff ($\Lambda$) dependence is investigated for both nuclear matter and $^{4}$He scattering by considering two cases of $\Lambda=450$ and $550$ MeV. The uncertainty coming from the dependence is smaller than chiral-3NF effects even at $E_{\rm in}/A_{\rm P}=175$ MeV.