Unified Ab Initio Approaches to Nuclear Structure and Reactions of Light Nuclei

Synergistic advances in the fundamental description of nucleonic interactions, many-body techniques, and scientific computing have opened new avenues for the consistent modeling of low-energy light-ion structure and reactions. These techniques bring powerful tools for accurate evaluations of crucial reaction data for nuclear astrophysics, fusion-energy research, and other applications. I will present an efficient many-body approach to treat nuclear bound and scattering states alike, known as the ab initio no-core shell model with continuum[1]. This method can accurately describe reaction systems of more than four nucleons starting from two- and three-nucleon interactions [2, 3, 4]. I will briefly review the physics cases recently unraveled by the method, including the crucial importance of three-nucleon forces. I will elaborate further on the important dialogue between ab initio theory and experiments with exotic nuclei to discriminate among different types of chiral interactions. Encouraged by numerous recent applications that validate our approach, we now aim at modeling polarized t(d, n)4 He fusion, the privileged method to achieve earth-based fusion. I will conclude with our first results towards accurate predictions for polarized fusion reaction observables. References [1] P. Navratil, S. Quaglioni, G. Hupin, C. Romero-Redondo and A.Calci, Phys. Scr. 91, 053002 (2016). [2] G. Hupin, J. Langhammer, P. Navratil, S. Quaglioni, A. Calci and R. Roth, Phys. Rev. C 88, 054622 (2013); J. Langhammer, P. Navratil, S. Quaglioni, G. Hupin, A. Calci and R. Roth, Phys. Rev. C 91, 021301 (2015). [3] G. Hupin, S. Quaglioni, and P. Navratil, Phys. Rev. C 90, 061601 (2014). [4] G. Hupin, S. Quaglioni, and P. Navratil, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 212502 (2015).