Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei

Accurate quantum Monte Carlo calculations of ground and low-lying excited states of light p-shell nuclei have been made for realistic nuclear forces. These include two-nucleon potentials that reproduce nucleon-nucleon scattering data and meson-exchange three-nucleon potentials constrained to reproduce the binding energies of s-shell nuclei. At present, results for more than 40 different (J(pi); T) states in A less than or equal to 10 nuclei, plus isobaric analogs, have been obtained, with an excellent reproduction of the experimental energy spectrum. These microscopic calculations show that nuclear structure, including both single-particle and clustering aspects, can be explained starting from elementary two- and three-nucleon interactions.