Coulomb-dominated low-energy deuteron stripping.

Abstract

Analysis of a three-body model shows that Coulomb polarization of the deuteron has very little influence on the branching ratio A(d,p)/A(d,n) for transfer reactions on target nucleus A at very low deuteron energies (the Oppenheimer-Phillips effect). We see that polarization effects in transfer reactions are not related to the long range of the Coulomb field, but are caused by the more intense fields near the target nucleus. However, even in that region the induced dipole moment is limited by the deuteron binding, and it is small for low Z targets. We see in addition that the transfer amplitudes tend to be insensitive to any polarization admixtures in the entrance channel. On the other hand, the branching ratio can be affected by the Coulomb barrier for the bound final-state wave function of the proton, especially for very weakly bound final states. Brief remarks about the relation of stripping theory to special properties of the d+d system are included.