Three-nucleon force in relativistic three-nucleon Faddeev calculations

Abstract

We extend our formulation of relativistic three-nucleon Faddeev equations to include both pairwise interactions and a three-nucleon force. Exact Poincare invariance is realized by adding interactions to the mass Casimir operator (rest Hamiltonian) of the non-interacting system without changing the spin Casimir operator. This is achieved by using interactions defined by rotationally invariant kernels that are functions of internal momentum variables and single-particle spins that undergo identical Wigner rotations. To solve the resulting equations one needs matrix elements of the three-nucleon force with these properties in a momentum-space partial-wave basis. We present two methods to calculate matrix elements of three-nucleon forces with these properties. For a number of examples we show that at higher energies, where effects of relativity and of three-nucleon forces are non-negligible, a consistent treatment of both is required to properly analyze the data.