Deuteron breakup pd→{pp}sn with forward emission of a fast 1S0 diproton

Abstract

The deuteron breakup reaction pd→{pp}sn, where {pp}s is a fast proton pair emitted in forward direction with small excitation energy Epp<3MeV, has been studied at proton beam energies of 0.5-2.0GeV using the ANKE spectrometer at COSY-Jülich. The differential c.m. cross sections are measured in complete kinematics and provide angular distributions of the neutron emission angle in the range θn=168°-180°, the dependence on beam energy at θn=180°, angular distributions of the direction of the proton in the pp rest frame, and distributions of the excitation energy Epp of the proton pair. The obtained data are analyzed on the basis of theoretical models previously developed for the pd→dp process in a similar kinematics and properly modified for the diproton channel in pd→{pp}sn. It is shown that the measured observables are highly sensitive to the short-range part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. © 2010 The American Physical Society.