Bochum 2009 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Hadronen und Kerne

HK 21: Plenary III

HK 21.3: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 10:00–10:30, Audi-Max

Nuclear force studies in few-nucleon systems — •Johan Messchendorp — KVI, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Understanding the exact nature of the nuclear force is one of the long-standing questions in nuclear physics. In 1935, Yukawa has explained the pair-wise nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction as an exchange of a boson. Current NN models are mainly inspired by Yukawa's idea and provide an excellent description of the high-quality database of proton-proton and neutron-proton scattering and of the properties of the deuteron.

The challenge lies in describing systems which involve more than two nucleons. Even for the simplest three-nucleon system, triton, a pair-wise NN interaction fails to describe such a system accurately enough, which has led to the introduction of three-nucleon forces and to alternative approaches such as chiral perturbation techniques. In the last decade, experiments at various laboratories were conducted to provide high-precision data in few-nucleon scattering processes, such as differential cross sections and polarization observables. These data form the basis to understand the various aspects of the many-body interactions via a rigorous comparison with ab-initio and self-consistent calculations including effects such as Coulomb and relativity.

In this paper, a review will be given of the experimental and theoretical activities in the field of few-nucleon systems. In particular, the most recent discoveries in three and four nucleon scattering reactions will be presented.