Irreducible nonlocality of optical model potentials based on realistic NN interactions

TL;DR

This paper explores the nonlocal structure of microscopic optical model potentials for nucleon-nucleus scattering, revealing that different nonlocal shapes can produce identical scattering results above a certain momentum cutoff.

Contribution

It demonstrates the irreducible nonlocality of optical potentials derived from realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions and how this nonlocality affects scattering observables.

Findings

Nonlocal optical potentials vary with momentum cutoff.

Scattering observables remain unchanged above a critical cutoff.

Coordinate-space potentials with cutoff at critical value are least structured.

Abstract

We investigate the nonlocal structure of optical model potentials for nucleon-nucleus scattering based on microscopic approaches. To this purpose, \emph{in-medium} folding optical potentials are calculated in momentum space and their corresponding coordinate-space counterpart are examined, paying special attention to their nonlocal shape. The nucleon-nucleon effective interaction consists of the actual full off-shell $g$ matrix in Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approximation. The nonlocality of effective interactions is preserved throughout all stages in the the calculation. Argonne $v_{18}$ bare potential and chiral next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order bare interaction are used as starting point. The study is focused on proton elastic scattering off $^{40}$Ca at beam energies between 30 and 800 MeV. We find that the gradual suppression of high-momentum contributions of the optical potential results in quite different-looking coordinate-space counterparts. Despite this non-uniqueness in their nonlocal structure, the implied scattering observables remain unchanged for momentum cutoff above a critical one, which depends on incident energy of the projectile. We find that coordinate-space potentials with momentum cutoffs at the critical value yield the least structured nonlocal behavior. Implications of these findings are discussed.