Study of the 3He(α, γ)7Be radiative-capture reaction with resonating-group wave functions

A fully microscopic calculation of the electric-dipole capture reaction of ³He + α to the ground and first excited states of ⁷Be is performed by using the wave functions obtained from a coupled-channel resonating-group calculation. The result for the cross-section factor at zero energy is 0.598 keV · b, which agrees with the values deduced from activation measurements of the capture cross section, but is somewhat higher than the values obtained from direct measurements. The fact that the calculated value for this quantity is rather large indicates that the solar-neutrino puzzle cannot be resolved by only examining the nuclear-physics aspect of this problem.