Six-body calculation of the α-deuteron radiative capture cross section

We have computed the cross section for the process d(α,γ)⁶Li at the low energies relevant for primordial nucleosynthesis and comparison with laboratory data. The final state is a six-body wave function generated by the variational Monte Carlo method from the Argonne v₁₈ and Urbana IX potentials, including improved treatment of large-particle-separation behavior. The initial state is built up from the α-particle and deuteron ground-state solutions for these potentials, with phenomenological descriptions of scattering and cluster distortions. The dominant E2 cross section is in reasonable agreement with the laboratory data. Including center-of-energy and other small corrections, we obtain an E1 contribution which is larger than the measured contribution at 2 MeV by a factor of 7. We calculate explicitly the impulse-approximation M1 contribution, which is expected to be very small, and obtain a result consistent with zero. We find little reason to suspect that the cross section is large enough to produce significant ⁶Li in the big bang.