Toward a Microscopic Description of Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

We present the first results of a comprehensive microscopic approach to describe nucleus-nucleus elastic collisions by means of an optical potential derived at first order in multiple-scattering theory and computed by folding the projectile and target nuclear densities with the nucleon-nucleon t matrix, which describes the interaction between each nucleon of the projectile and each nucleon of the target. Chiral interactions are consistently used in the calculation of the t matrix and of the nonlocal nuclear densities, which are computed within the ab initio no-core shell model. Cross sections calculated for α collisions on ^{12}C and ^{16}O at projectile energies in the range 100-300 MeV are presented and compared with available data. For momentum transfer q up to about 1.0 fm^{-1} our results are in good agreement with the experimental data, whereas for higher momenta a reduction of the imaginary contributions is needed.