The binding energies of s-shell nuclei

Abstract

We have calculated the binding energies of 4He and 3H with soft- and hard-core nucleon–nucleon potentials. With central forces, using harmonic-oscillator wave functions, we find that accurate results can be obtained by taking only the long-range part of the potential and its second-order perturbative term. When tensor forces are present, the long-range interference term is also included in the calculation. In this case, the method is not accurate and underbinds these nuclei by about 1 MeV per particle. Ignoring Coulomb forces, our method yields a value of 18.5 MeV for the binding energy of 4He with the Hamada–Johnston potential.