The Collisions of Nucleons with Deuterons

A considerable amount of theoretical data (assuming central nuclear forces) is now available concerning the elastic scattering of nucleons with energies up to 16 MeV by deuterons. Buckingham, Hubbard and Massey have taken the force to be of exponential shape with range consistent with the binding energy of the deuteron and triton while Christian and Gammel have used Yukawa and gaussian shape interactions with ranges consistent with all relevant two-body data but which are considerably too short to give the correct binding energy of the triton on the assumption of purely central forces. In the present paper the former calculations have been extended to allow fully for the contributions from high order phases. The dependence of the theoretical predictions on the assumptions made about the range, shape and exchange character of the nuclear forces is discussed in detail. It is shown that the observed data are inconsistent with the assumption of mainly ordinary forces even for the least sensitive case of the short range gaussian interaction. Extension of the theory to include explicitly the tensor force is likely to be worth while as providing useful information about nuclear forces.