Relativistic Effects in Neutron-Deuteron Elastic Scattering

Abstract

We solved the three-nucleon (3N) Faddeev equation including relativistic features at incoming neutron lab energies ${E}_{n}^{\mathrm{lab}}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}28,65,135$, and 250 MeV. Those features are relativistic kinematics, boost effects and Wigner spin rotations. As dynamical input a relativistic nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction exactly on-shell equivalent to the AV18 NN potential has been used. The effects of Wigner rotations for elastic scattering observables were found to be small. The boost effects are significant at higher energies. They diminish the transition matrix elements at higher energies and lead in spite of the increased relativistic phase-space factor as compared to the nonrelativistic one to rather small effects in the cross section, which are mostly restricted to the backward angles.