Three-nucleon processes and the total pion absorption cross section in 3He

Abstract

Pion absorption processes involving three nucleons have been investigated in 3He with positive and negative pions of 64, 119, 162 and 206 MeV kinetic energy. The most important of these processes is characterized by a constant phase-space density and has comparable integrated cross sections for π + and π − with a Δ-resonance-like dependence on the pion energy. This process constitutes up to one third of the total absorption cross section. The total absorption cross section has been determined by adding up the measured cross sections for all the observed absorption channels.