Dispersion relations applied to double-folding potentials from chiral effective field theory

Abstract

We present a determination of optical potentials using the double-folding method based on chiral effective field theory nucleon-nucleon interactions at next-to-next-to-leading order combined with dispersion relations to constrain the imaginary part. This approach is benchmarked on $^{16}$O--$^{16}$O collisions, and extended to the $^{12}$C--$^{12}$C and $^{12}$C--$^{16}$O cases. Predictions derived from these potentials are compared to data for elastic scattering at energies up to 1000 MeV, as well as for fusion at low energy. Without adjusting parameters, excellent agreement with experiment is found. In addition, we study the sensitivity of the corresponding cross sections to the nucleon-nucleon interactions and nuclear densities used.