Three-nucleon force contribution to the deuteron channel in (d,p) reactions

Abstract

The contribution of a three-nucleon (3N) force, acting between the neutron and proton in the incoming deuteron with a target nucleon, to the deuteron-target potential in the entrance channel of the $A(d,p)B$ reaction has been calculated within the adiabatic distorted wave approximation (ADWA). Four different 3N interaction sets from local chiral effective field theory ($\chi$EFT) at next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO) were used. Strong sensitivity of the adiabatic deuteron-target potential to the choice of the 3N force format has been found, which originates from the enhanced sensitivity to the short-range physics of nucleon-nucleon (NN) and 3N interactions in the ADWA. Such a sensitivity is reduced when a Watanabe folding model is used to generate $d$-$A$ potential instead of ADWA. The impact of the 3N force contribution on $(d,p)$ cross sections depends on assumptions made about the $p$-$A$ and $n$-$A$ optical potentials used to calculate the distorted $d$-$A$ potential in the entrance channel. It is different for local and nonlocal optical potentials and depends on whether the induced three-body force arising due to neglect of target excitations is included or not.