Proton-${}^3$He elastic scattering at low energies

Abstract

We present new accurate measurements of the differential cross section $\sigma (\theta )$ and the proton analyzing power $A_y$ for proton-${}^3$He elastic scattering at various energies. A supersonic gas jet target has been employed to obtain these low energy cross section measurements. The $\sigma (\theta )$ distributions have been measured at $E_p$ = 0.99, 1.59, 2.24, 3.11, and 4.02 MeV. Full angular distributions of $A_y$ have been measured at $E_p$ = 1.60, 2.25, 3.13, and 4.05 MeV. This set of high-precision data is compared to four-body variational calculations employing realistic nucleon-nucleon (NN) and three-nucleon (3N) interactions. For the unpolarized cross section the agreement between the theoretical calculation and data is good when a $3N$ potential is used. The comparison between the calculated and measured proton analyzing powers reveals discrepancies of approximately 50% at the maximum of each distribution. This is analogous to the existing ``$A_y$ Puzzle'' known for the past 20 years in nucleon-deuteron elastic scattering.

22 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Physical Review C, corrected reference 49

References in corpus (1)

• Low energy $n-\nuc{3}{H}$ scattering : a novel testground for nuclear interaction

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Ab initio four-body calculation of n-3He, p-3H, and d-d scattering
• Four-body calculation of proton-3He scattering
• Four-nucleon system with $\Delta$-isobar excitation
• Resonant relativistic corrections and the A_y problem