Connecting ground-state properties of ${}^6$Li to each other and to scattering data

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relationship between the ANC of $^6$Li and its separation energy using ab initio calculations, and evaluates methods to accurately extract ANC from phase shift data, highlighting the correlation's origin and uncertainties.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the ANC's correlation with separation energy stems from small potential depth changes and assesses the accuracy of extracting ANC from phase shifts using R-matrix and CM-ERE methods.

Findings

ANC strongly correlated with separation energy.

R-matrix converges faster and is more robust than CM-ERE.

Uncertainty quantification from theory truncations is insufficient.

Abstract

We examine the relationship between the Asymptotic Normalization Coefficient (ANC) of $^6$Li and other low-energy observables in the $\alpha$-deuteron system. Our analysis uses a set of calculations carried out within the {\it ab initio} No Core Shell Model with Continuum (NCSMC) using a variety of inter-nucleon interactions and basis sizes, and yielding ${}^6$Li deuteron separation energies between 1.3 and 1.8 MeV [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 042503 (2022)]. These NCSMC calculations show that the square of the ANC is strongly correlated with the separation energy over this range. In this work, we investigate the origin of this correlation using the phenomenological $R$-matrix, a single-channel potential and a perturbative approach. We show that this correlation occurs because the depth of the $\alpha$-deuteron central potential changes by only a small relative amount as the separation energy varies. We then investigate if the ANC can be accurately extracted from $\alpha$-deuteron phase shifts in an ideal case in which low-energy data are available and there are no experimental errors. We find that both $R$-matrix and Coulomb-modified effective-range theory (CM-ERE) yield extracted ANCs close to, although not exactly equal to, the true value, provided the extrapolation is constrained by the known position of the bound-state pole and at least three terms are included in the fit function. The $R$-matrix approach converges faster than the CM-ERE as the number of parameters increases and is also more robust against the inclusion of low-energy and high-energy phase shift data. Finally, our study also shows that a naive quantification of uncertainties by comparing different truncations used in both theories is not accurate, and suggests the accuracy of ANCs extracted from phase shift data needs further investigation.