Three-Nucleon Scattering at Intermediate Energies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 3D technique for evaluating three-nucleon scattering processes at intermediate energies, comparing it with traditional partial wave methods and analyzing relativistic effects up to 500 MeV.

Contribution

It presents a partial wave-free 3D approach to three-nucleon scattering calculations, offering a comparison with existing methods and exploring relativistic effects at higher energies.

Findings

The 3D technique agrees with partial wave calculations at 197 MeV.

Rescattering processes remain significant at intermediate energies.

Relativistic effects become notable above 400 MeV.

Abstract

By means of a technique, which does not employ partial wave (PW) decompositions, the nucleon-deuteron break-up process is evaluated in the Faddeev scheme, where only the leading order term of the amplitude is considered. This technique is then applied to calculate the semi-exclusive proton-deuteron break-up reaction d(p,n)pp for proton laboratory energies Elab of a few hundred MeV. A comparison with PW calculations is performed at 197 MeV projectile energy. At the same energy rescattering processes, which are not included in the 3D calculations yet, are shown to be still important in the full Faddeev PW calculations, especially for the cross section and the analyzing power Ay. Next, kinematical relativistic effects are investigated for projectile energies up to about 500 MeV. At the higher energies, those relativistic effects start not to be negligible, especially in the peak of the cross section.