Non-relativistic approximations to the pion production operator in 4He(p, n π+) 4He

Abstract

Various non-relativistic pion production operators are applied in the study of the 4He(p, nπ +) 4He process. We compare their predictions with fully covariant calculations of the external emission graphs both for pseudovector and pseudoscalar coupling. It is found that the non-relativistic pion production operators cannot reproduce the relativistic results quantitatively, in particular for the pseudoscalar case. The simple static pion production operator gives agreement with the relativistic pseudovector results to within a factor three or four. Adding recoil terms to this static operator has a significant effect on the cross section but does not improve the agreement with the relativistic results. The implications of PCAC and the soft-pion theorem for the relativistic calculation are studied. The uncertainty in the cross section in the soft-pion approach is found to be considerably smaller than the difference between pseudovector and pseudoscalar results or between the relativistic pseudovector result and its non-relativistic approximations.