Reaction Mechanisms of the Proton - Deuteron Breakup Process at GeV Energies

Abstract

The deuteron fragmentation by fast protons has been studied both near the kinematics of quasi-free proton - proton scattering and far away from it. We have concentrated on the interplay between different reaction mechanisms associated with the antisymmetrization of the initial and final states and rescattering contributions. A multiple-scattering-expansion technique has been applied to evaluate the reaction amplitude. An essential element of this approach in the momentum representation is the use of the effective nucleon- nucleon interaction constructed by Love and Franey as a two-body t-matrix for the incident proton scattering on a bound nucleon in the deuteron. Along with the five-fold cross sections, the proton analyzing power and the deuteron analyzing powers have been calculated as function of the momentum of the outgoing fast proton. The results are compared with the data obtained by the Gatchina-Saclay collaboration.