Neutron-deuteron breakup reaction as a tool for studying neutron-neutron interactions

An analysis of the most recent data on the reaction nd → pnn revealed a serious discrepancy between theoretical predictions and cross sections measured for this reaction in various configurations where the role of neutron-neutron interactions is important. In view of this, it seems necessary both to develop theoretical approaches and to obtain new experimental data. For this purpose, a setup for studying the neutron-deuteron breakup reaction was created at the Institute for Nuclear Research on the basis of the neutron beam in the RADEX channel and deuterium targets. This facility makes it possible to perform experiments over a broad region of primary-neutron energies (10–60 MeV) and in various (final-state interaction, quasifree scattering, and spatial-star) configurations. Preliminary results of the respective experiment were obtained for configurations of final-state neutron-neutron interaction and quasifree neutron-neutron scattering.