Effects of variable nucleon energy in the relativistic analysis of deuteron-nucleus scattering

Abstract

Deuteron-nucleus elastic scattering at intermediate energies is analysed using a deuteron interaction obtained from the covariant folding of recent energy- and atomic-mass-number-dependent global Dirac-phenomenology nucleon-nucleus potentials. The effects of allowing the nucleons in the deuteron to interact with the target with a variable energy, determined by their relative momentum, are studied for the first time. The inclusion of these effects in parameter-free calculations of cross section and polarization observables for deuteron elastic scattering on 24Mg, 40Ca and 58Ni improves the agreement with the data at deuteron energies of 400 and 700 MeV and is particularly strong at 400 MeV.