The Elastic Scattering of Neutrons by Tritons at 14 MeV

The theory of neutron-triton scattering has been worked out, using Wheeler's resonating group structure method, and applied to a neutron energy of 14 MeV for four types of nuclear interaction: an ordinary force, an exchange force of Majorana-Heisenberg type, a symmetrical exchange force, and the Serber exchange mixture. The nuclear potential is taken in the gaussian from V 0 exp ( - μ r 2 ) and the corresponding two body ground state wave function as N 0 exp ( - ½λ r 2 ). The resulting integro-differential equations for scattering are solved by variational methods. The symmetric and Majorana-Heisenberg forces give the right general shape for the angular distribution of scattering, but the ordinary and Serber forces give a rather higher peak of back scattering than indicated by the experiments of Coon, Bockelman and Barschall at 14 MeV. The measurements appear to favour forces of a symmetrical exchange type as against an ordinary force type.