Electromagnetic break-up of nuclei with A = 3 - 7

Abstract

This talk contains a short review of some of the progresses made in the last three years in the calculations of electromagnetic cross sections of light nuclei up to A=7. Since many of them have been possible thanks to the use of the Lorentz Integral Transform (LIT) method, both for inclusive and exclusive reactions, I will first make a few remarks on the method, stressing its essential points and then show results for different nuclei. One of the interesting outcomes is e.g. the appearing of typical collective motion features from ab initio six-body calculations. When a comparison with available experimental data is attempted, it is rather disappointing to realize that low-energy data are old, incomplete and not accurate enough to disantangle interesting effects, showing the need of a major experimental program in this direction, together with more theoretical efforts to implement modern realistic forces in continuum calculations of $A\geq 4$ systems.