Search for: All records

Abstract We treat low-energy 3 He– α elastic scattering in an effective field theory (EFT) that exploits the separation of scales in this reaction. We compute the amplitude up to next-to-next-to-leading order, developing a hierarchy of the effective-range parameters (ERPs) that contribute at various orders. We use the resulting formalism to analyse data for recent measurements at center-of-mass energies of 0.38–3.12 MeV using the scattering of nuclei in inverse kinematics (SONIK) gas target at TRIUMF as well as older data in this energy regime. We employ a likelihood function that incorporates the theoretical uncertainty due to truncation of the EFT and use Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling to obtain the resulting posterior probability distribution. We find that the inclusion of a small amount of data on the analysing power A y is crucial to determine the sign of the p-wave splitting in such an analysis. The combination of A y and SONIK data constrains all ERPs up to O ( p 4 ) in both s- and p-waves quite well. The asymptotic normalisation coefficients and s-wave scattering length are consistent with a recent EFT analysis of the capture reaction 3 He( α , γ ) 7 Be. 

Phenomenological R -matrix has been a standard framework for the evaluation of resolved resonance cross section data in nuclear physics for many years. It is a powerful method for comparing different types of experimental nuclear data and combining the results of many different experimental measurements in order to gain a better estimation of the true underlying cross sections. Yet a practical challenge has always been the estimation of the uncertainty on both the cross sections at the energies of interest and the fit parameters, which can take the form of standard level parameters. Frequentist ( χ 2 -based) estimation has been the norm. In this work, a Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampler, emcee , has been implemented for the R -matrix code AZURE2 , creating the Bayesian R -matrix Inference Code Kit ( BRICK ). Bayesian uncertainty estimation has then been carried out for a simultaneous R -matrix fit of the 3 He ( α , γ ) 7 Be and 3 He ( α , α ) 3 He reactions in order to gain further insight into the fitting of capture and scattering data. Both data sets constrain the values of the bound state α -particle asymptotic normalization coefficients in 7 Be. The analysis highlights the need for low-energy scattering data with well-documented uncertainty information and shows how misleading results can be obtained in its absence.