Microscopic multicluster description of neutron-halo nuclei with a stochastic variational method

To test a multicluster approach for halo nuclei, we give a unified description for the ground states of $^6$He and $^8$He in a model comprising an $\alpha$ cluster and single-neutron clusters. The intercluster wave function is taken a superposition of terms belonging to different arrangements, each defined by a set of Jacobi coordinates. Each term is then a superposition of products of gaussian functions of the individual Jacobi coordinates with different widths, projected to angular momenta $l=0$ or 1. To avoid excessively large dimensions and ``overcompleteness", stochastic methods were tested for selecting the gaussians spanning the basis. For $^6$He, we were able to calculate ground-state energies that are virtully exact within the subspace defined by the arrangements and $l$ values, and we found that preselected random sets of bases (with or without simulated annealing) yield excellent numerical convergence to this ``exact" value with thoroughly truncated bases. For $^8$He good energy convergence was achieved in a state space comprising three arrangements with all $l=0$, and there are indications showing that the contributions of other subspaces are likely to be small. The $^6$He and $^8$He energies are reproduced by the same effective force very well, and the matter radii obtained are similar to those of other sophisticated calculations.