Ab Initio Translationally Invariant Nonlocal One-Body Densities from No-Core Shell-Model Theory

Background: It is well known that effective nuclear interactions are in general nonlocal. Thus if nuclear densities obtained from ab initio no-core shell-model (NCSM) calculations are to be used in reaction calculations, translationally invariant nonlocal densities must be available. Purpose: Though it is standard to extract translationally invariant one-body local densities from NCSM calculations to calculate local nuclear observables like radii and transition amplitudes, the corresponding nonlocal one-body densities have not been considered so far. A major reason for this is that the procedure for removing the center-of-mass component from NCSM wave functions up to now has only been developed for local densities. Results: A formulation for removing center-of-mass contributions from nonlocal one-body densities obtained from NCSM and symmetry-adapted NCSM (SA-NCSM) calculations is derived, and applied to the ground state densities of He-4, Li-6, C-12, and O-16. The nonlocality is studied as a function of angular momentum components in momentum as well as coordinate space. Conclusions: We find that the nonlocality for the ground state densities of the nuclei under consideration increases as a function of the angular momentum. The relative magnitude of those contributions decreases with increasing angular momentum. In general, the nonlocal structure of the one-body density matrices we studied is given by the shell structure of the nucleus, and cannot be described with simple functional forms.