Three-nucleon system: Irreducible and reducible contributions of the three-nucleon force

Abstract

The three-nucleon bound and scattering equations are solved in momentum space for a coupled-channels Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian couples the purely nucleonic sector of Hilbert space with a sector in which one nucleon is excited to a Δ isobar. The interaction consists of irreducible two-baryon and irreducible three-baryon potentials. The calculation keeps only the purely nucleonic one among the irreducible three-baryon potentials. The coupled-channels two-baryon potential yields additional reducible contributions to the three-nucleon force. The Coulomb interaction between the two protons is included using the method of screening and renormalization. Three-nucleon force effects on the bound-state energies and on observables of elastic nucleon-deuteron scattering and breakup are studied.