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

Fisher, B. M.; Brune, C. R.; Karwowski, H. J.; Leonard, D. S.; Ludwig, E. J.; Black, T. C.; Viviani, M.; Kievsky, A.; Rosati, S.

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

Authors

Description

We present new accurate measurements of the differential cross section $σ(θ)$ 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 $σ(θ)$ 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