Further improvement in the variational many-body wave functions for light nuclei

Abstract

An improved variational ansatz is proposed and implemented for variational many-body wave functions for light nuclei with nucleons interacting through Argonne (AV 18) and Urbana IX (UIX) three-nucleon interactions. The new ansatz is based upon variationally distinguishing between the various components of the two-body Jastrow and operatorial correlations, which are operated upon by three-body and spin-orbit correlations. We obtain noticeable improvement in the quality of the wave function and lowering of the energies compared to earlier results. The new energies are -8.38(1), -28.07(1), and -29.90(1) MeV for 3H, 4He, and 6Li, respectively. Though, the present improved ansatz still fails to stabilize the 6Li nucleus against a breakup into an α particle and a deuteron by 390 KeV; nonetheless, it is an improvement over previous studies.