Ab initio calculations of low-energy nuclear scattering using confining potential traps

Understand

A recently modified method to enable low-energy nuclear scattering results to be extracted from the discrete energy levels of the target-projectile clusters confined by harmonic potential traps is tested.

• We report encouraging results for neutron--$\alpha$ and neutron--$^{24}\mathrm{O}$ elastic scattering from analyzing the trapped levels computed using two different ab initio nuclear structure methods.
• The $n$--$\alpha$ results have also been checked against a direct ab initio reaction calculation.
• The $n$--$^{24}\mathrm{O}$ results demonstrate the approach's applicability for a large range of systems provided their spectra in traps can be computed by ab initio methods.