Effective operators within the ab initio no-core shell model

Ionel Stetcu, Bruce R. Barrett, Petr Navratil, James P. Vary

Published 2004-12-02, updated 2005-03-19Version 2

We implement an effective operator formalism for general one- and two-body operators, obtaining results consistent with the no-core shell model (NCSM) wave functions. The Argonne V8' nucleon-nucleon potential was used in order to obtain realistic wave functions for 4He, 6Li and 12C. In the NCSM formalism, we compute electromagnetic properties using the two-body cluster approximation for the effective operators and obtain results which are sensitive to the range of the bare operator. To illuminate the dependence on the range, we employ a Gaussian two-body operator of variable range, finding weak renormalization of long range operators (e.g., quadrupole) in a fixed model space. This is understood in terms of the two-body cluster approximation which accounts mainly for short-range correlations. Consequently, short range operators, such as the relative kinetic energy, will be well renormalized in the two-body cluster approximation.