Radiative Capture Reactions in Lattice Effective Field Theory

Abstract

We outline a general method for computing nuclear capture reactions on the lattice. The method consists of two major parts. In this study we detail the second part which consists of calculating an effective two-body capture reaction on the lattice at finite volume. We solve this problem by calculating the two-point Green's function using an infrared regulator and the capture amplitude to a two-body bound state. We demonstrate the details of this method by calculating on the lattice the leading M1 contribution to the radiative neutron capture on proton at low energies using pionless effective field theory. We find good agreement with exact continuum results. The approach we outline here can be used in a wide range of applications including few-body reactions in cold atomic systems and hadronic reactions in lattice quantum chromodynamics.