Deuteron break-up and three body forces

Abstract

The nucleon induced deuteron break-up reaction is only beginning to be set in an accurate quantitative basis near threshold and promises to yield precious information on nuclear interactions. The reactions d+p → p+p+n, bombarding protons with deuterons have an interesting “magnifying” glass effect which allows a very detailed study of anomalies in the correlation cross section. The n+d→n+n+p reaction should also be investigated near threshold with high resolution neutron beams, or with techniques permitting to extract high resolution spectra, like associated particle tagging in the reactions producing the neutron beam. The field here is wide open, although the n-n interaction is less well known than the p-p interaction. Clearly, colliding neutron beams could improve our knowledge of the n-n interaction once and for all. It seems incredible that in the last ten years no serious effort has been directed to such a fundamental interaction as that of the neutron-neutron system at low energies.[/ p]