In recent years, construction of accurate nucleon-nucleon potentials and increases in computing power have stimulated developments of new methods capable of solving the nuclear structure problem for systems of more than four nucleons. One of these methods is the ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM). The principal foundation of this approach is the use of effective interactions appropriate for the large, but finite, harmonic-oscillator basis employed in the calculations. These effective interactions are derived from the underlying realistic inter-nucleon potentials in a way that guarantees convergence to the exact solution as the basis size increases.

At present, the ab initio NCSM is capable of including the much-less-explored realistic three-nucleon forces. I will discuss convergence tests of the method and nuclear structure results for light nuclei obtained by using several modern nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon interactions. Also, I will present results of cluster form factor and spectroscopic factor calculations. An important result of these nuclear-structure studies is the significance of three-nucleon interaction in determining not only the binding energy, but also the excitation spectra and other observables.

ANL Physics Division Seminar Schedule