Radiative alpha-capture cross sections from realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions and variational Monte Carlo wave functions

Abstract

We report the first calculations of cross sections for the radiative capture reactions t(alpha,gamma)^7Li and ^3He(alpha,gamma)^7Be below 2 MeV which use wave functions derived from realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions by the variational Monte Carlo technique. After examining several small corrections to the dominant E1 operator, we find energy dependences for the low-energy S-factors which agree reasonably with experimental measurements. There is no contradiction with the previous theoretical understanding of these processes, but the zero-energy derivative of the t(alpha,gamma)^7Li S-factor is smaller than in most models. While this method can in principle predict cross section normalizations, the normalizations of our results are mostly too low.