Structure ofA=10–13Nuclei with Two- Plus Three-Nucleon Interactions from Chiral Effective Field Theory

Abstract

Properties of finite nuclei are evaluated with two-nucleon (NN) and three-nucleon (NNN) interactions derived within chiral effective field theory. The nuclear Hamiltonian is fixed by properties of the A=2 system, except for two low-energy constants (LECs) that parametrize the short range NNN interaction, which we constrain with the A=3 binding energies. We investigate the sensitivity of 4He, 6Li, 10,11B, and 12,13C properties to the variation of the constrained LECs. We identify observables that are sensitive to this variation and find preferred values that give the best overall description. We demonstrate that the NNN interaction terms significantly improve the binding energies and spectra of mid-p-shell nuclei not just with the preferred choice of the LECs but even within a wide range of the constrained LECs. We find that a very high quality description of these nuclei requires further improvements to the chiral Hamiltonian.