Speaker
Description
Pionless effective field theory (EFT) represents a highly convenient tool that allows the description of nuclear interaction at very low energies. This theory, at its leading order, has been used to study various systems up to ${}^{16}$O; however, only with limited success, rendering $A > 4$ nuclei unbound in the large cutoff limit. Higher orders of the theory have been mostly tested in $A \leq 3$ nuclear systems. At the three-body level, it has been shown that considering sub-leading terms systematically improves the theory's predictive power. Whether experimentally observed binding of $A > 4$ nuclei might be restored at higher orders remains an open question.
In my contribution, I will show how a few-body approach based on the Stochastic Variational Method with a correlated Gaussian basis and a harmonic oscillator trap enables studying nuclear systems with A > 3. In particular, I will present the microscopic predictions of s-wave low-momentum n-d, n-3H, n-3He, and n-4He elastic scattering within perturbative next-to-leading order Pionless EFT [1,2]. The corresponding results will be compared to available experimental data.
[1] M. Schäfer and B. Bazak, Phys. Rev. C 107 (2023) 064001.
[2] M. Bagnarol, M. Schäfer, B. Bazak, and N. Barnea, Phys. Lett. B 844 (2023) 138078.
