Real-time evolution method and its application to 3α cluster system

A new theoretical method is proposed to describe the ground and excited cluster states of atomic nuclei. The method utilizes the equation-of-motion of the Gaussian wave packets to generate the basis wave functions having various cluster configurations. The generated basis wave functions are superposed to diagonalize the Hamiltonian. In other words, this method uses the real time as the generator coordinate. The application to the $3\alpha$ system as a benchmark shows that the new method works efficiently and yields the result consistent with or better than the other cluster models. Brief discussion on the structure of the excited $0^+$ and $1^-$ states is also made.