Nuclear Seminar

Ab Initio Calculations of Electroweak Transitions in Light Nuclei

Dr. Muslema Pervin
Argonne National Laboratory

Monday, April 14, 2008   4:00 p.m.   NSH 124
(Refreshments served prior to seminar in NSH 124)

The variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and Green’s function Monte Carlo (GFMC) techniques are powerful tools for calculating properties of light nuclei. These methods, in combination with the Argonne v₁₈ two-nucleon and Illinois-2 three-nucleon potentials, have recently been applied to calculate electroweak matrix elements in A=6, 7 nuclei with some success. We are now applying the GFMC method to additional off-diagonal matrix elements for nuclei with A=8. The electroweak transitions for A=8 are more challenging because many involve transitions from a big component of an initial state to a small component of a final state. In addition some of the physical states have significant isospin mixing. Of particular interest are the weak decay processes ⁸Li(β^-)⁸Be* and ⁸B(β⁺)⁸Be*.