Unitary correlation in nuclear reaction theory: Separation of nuclear reactions and spectroscopic factors

Abstract

We prove that the amplitudes for the (d,p), (d,pn) and (e,e'p) reactions determining the asymptotic behavior of the exact scattering wave functions in the corresponding channels are invariant under unitary correlation operators while the spectroscopic factors are not. Moreover, the exact reaction amplitudes are not parametrized in terms of the spectroscopic factors and cannot provide a tool to determine the spectroscopic factors.