Scattering of ultrarelativistic deuterons by nuclei

Abstract

Theoretical study of the interaction of ultrarelativistic hadrons with one another and with nuclei is stimulated by a number of experiments on the scattering of these particles with energies of ten billion electronvolt and more. It is difficult to explain the data obtained in such experiments because of the absence of a consistent relativistic quantum theory of hadrons. However, the existing experiments on the interaction of hadrons with hadrons and nuclei at high and superhigh energies can be well described phenomenologically in the framework of the diffraction approximation [1, 2], which was also used successfully earlier but at much lower, nonrelativistic energies [3, 4]. In the present paper, we derive a general formula for Hyugens's principle for monochromatic vector waves describing particles with spin 1 (for example, deuterons); this is used to obtain formulas for the cross sections of elastic and inelastic (accompanied by the emission of photons without disintegration of the particles) scattering of ultrarelativistic deuterons by nuclei with allowance for the spin and structure of the deuteron and the target nucleus; some special cases are also considered. The internal structure of the colliding nuclei, and also the possibility of excitation and disintegration of the target nuclei are taken into account by means of a generalization of the diffraction method to the case of the collision of any two nuclei, consideration being given to the interaction between each nucleon of the incident nucleus and all the nucleons of the target nucleus. In particular, this generalizes the results of [3–6] (in which diffraction scattering of elementary charged particles with spins 0, 1/2, and 1 with emission of photons was studied) to the case of composite incident particles with spin.