Ab initio translationally invariant nucleon-nucleus optical potentials

Abstract

We combine the \textit{ab initio} symmetry-adapted no-core shell model (SA-NCSM) with the single-particle Green's function approach to construct optical potentials rooted in first principles. Specifically, we show that total cross sections and phase shifts for neutron elastic scattering from a $^4$He target with projectile energies between 0.5 and 10 MeV closely reproduce the experiment. In addition, we discuss an important new development that resolves a long-standing issue with spurious center-of-mass motion in the Green's function formalism for many-body approaches. The new development opens the path for first-principle predictions of cross sections for elastic scattering of single-nucleon projectiles, nucleon capture and deuteron breakup reactions, feasible for a broad range of open-shell spherical and deformed nuclei in the SA-NCSM approach.