Abstract
Phys. Rev. C 97, 034619 (2018) We derive a microscopic optical potential for intermediate energies using ab
initio translationally invariant nonlocal one-body nuclear densities computed
within the no-core shell model (NCSM) approach utilizing two- and three-nucleon
chiral interactions as the only input. The optical potential is derived at
first-order within the spectator expansion of the non-relativistic multiple
scattering theory by adopting the impulse approximation and using the same
chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction as that used to compute densities. The
ground state local and nonlocal densities of 4,6,8He, 12C, and 16O are
calculated and applied to optical potential construction. The differential
cross sections and the analyzing powers for the elastic proton scattering off
of these nuclei are then calculated for different values of the incident proton
energy. The impact of nonlocality and the COM removal is discussed. The use of
nonlocal densities has a substantial impact on the differential cross sections
and improves agreement with experiment in comparison to results generated with
the local densities especially for light nuclei.