Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
We obtain properties of 12C in the ab initio no-core nuclear shell model. The effective Hamiltonians are derived microscopically from the realistic CD Bonn and the Argonne V8' nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials as a function of the finite harmonic oscillator basis space. Binding energies, excitation spectra, and electromagnetic properties are presented for model spaces up to 5Planck's over 2piOmega. The favorable comparison with available data is a consequence of the underlying NN interaction rather than a phenomenological fit.