We review recent results for electromagnetic reactions and related sum rules in light and medium-mass nuclei obtained from coupled-cluster theory. In particular, we highlight our recent computations of the photodisintegration cross section of 40Ca and of the electric dipole polarizability for oxygen and calcium isotopes. We also provide new results for the Coulomb sum rule for 4He and 16O. For 4He we perform a thorough comparison of coupled-cluster theory with exact hyperspherical harmonics.
We briefly review the theory for electromagnetic reactions in light nuclei based on the coupled-cluster formulation of the Lorentz integral transform method. Results on photodisintegration reactions of 22O and 40Ca are reported on and preliminary calculations on the Coulomb sum rule for 4He are discussed.
The formalism that describes radiative-capture reactions at low energies within an extended two-cluster potential model is presented. Construction of the operator of single-photon emission is based on a generalisation of the Siegert theorem with which the amplitude of the electromagnetic process is constructed in an explicitly gauge-independent way. While the starting point for this construction is a microscopic (single-nucleon) current model, the resulting operator of low-energy photon emission by a two-cluster system is expressed in terms of macroscopic quantities for the clusters and does not depend directly on their intrinsic coordinates and momenta. The multichannel algebraic scattering (MCAS) approach has been used to construct the initial- and final-state wave functions. We present a general expression for the scattering wave function obtained from the MCAS T matrix taking into account inelastic channels and Coulomb distortion. The developed formalism has been tested on the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be reaction cross section at astrophysical energies. The energy dependence of the evaluated cross section and S factor agrees well with that extracted from measurement though the calculated quantities slightly overestimate data.
We derive coupled-cluster equations for three-body Hamiltonians. The equations for the one- and two-body cluster amplitudes are presented in a factorized form that leads to an efficient numerical implementation. We employ low-momentum two- and three-nucleon interactions and calculate the binding energy of He-4. The results show that the main contribution of the three-nucleon interaction stems from its density-dependent zero-, one-, and two-body terms that result from the normal ordering of the Hamiltonian in coupled-cluster theory. The residual three-body terms that remain after normal ordering can be neglected.
Electromagnetic reactions on light nuclei are fundamental to advance our understanding of nuclear structure and dynamics. The perturbative nature of the electromagnetic probes allows to clearly connect measured cross sections with the calculated structure properties of nuclear targets. We present an overview on recent theoretical ab-initio calculations of electron-scattering and photonuclear reactions involving light nuclei. We encompass both the conventional approach and the novel theoretical framework provided by chiral effective field theories. Because both strong and electromagnetic interactions are involved in the processes under study, comparison with available experimental data provides stringent constraints on both many-body nuclear Hamiltonians and electromagnetic currents. We discuss what we have learned from studies on electromagnetic observables of light nuclei, starting from the deuteron and reaching up to nuclear systems with mass number A=16.
We demonstrate the capability of coupled-cluster theory to compute the Coulomb sum rule for the $^4$He and $^{16}$O nuclei using interactions from chiral effective field theory. We perform several checks, including a few-body benchmark for $^4$He. We provide an analysis of the center-of-mass contaminations, which we are able to safely remove. We then compare with other theoretical results and experimental data available in the literature, obtaining a fair agreement. This is a first and necessary step towards initiating a program for computing neutrino-nucleus interactions from first principles and supporting the experimental long-baseline neutrino program with a state-of-the-art theory that can reach medium-mass nuclei.