Microscopic calculation of the 3He(α,γ)7Be and 3H(α,γ)7Li capture cross sections using realistic interactions

The radiative capture cross sections for the 3He(α,γ)7Be and 3H(α,γ)7Li reactions are calculated in the fully microscopic fermionic molecular dynamics approach using a realistic effective interaction that reproduces the nucleon-nucleon scattering data. At large distances bound and scattering states are described by antisymmetrized products of 4He and 3He/3H ground states. At short distances the many-body Hilbert space is extended with additional many-body wave functions needed to represent polarized clusters and shell-model-like configurations. Properties of the bound states are described well, as are the scattering phase shifts. The calculated S factor for the 3He(α,γ)7Be reaction agrees very well with recent experimental data in both absolute normalization and energy dependence. In the case of the 3H(α,γ)7Li reaction the calculated S factor is larger than available experimental data by about 15%.