Thermal neutron captures on $d$ and $^3$He

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We report on a study of the $nd$ and $n\,^3$He radiative captures at thermal neutron energies, using wave functions obtained from either chiral or conventional two- and three-nucleon realistic potentials with the hyperspherical harmonics method, and electromagnetic currents derived in chiral effective field theory up to one loop.

• The predicted $nd$ and $n\,^3$He cross sections are in good agreement with data, but exhibit a significant dependence on the input Hamiltonian.
• A comparison is also made between these and new results for the $nd$ and $n\,^3$He cross sections obtained in the conventional framework for both potentials and currents.