Three-body calculation of neutron-deuteron elastic scattering in the energy region from 2.5 MeV up to 50 MeV

The three-body Faddeev equations for neutron-deuteron scattering are solved in the energy region from 2.5 MeV to 50 MeV of the incident neutron energy with small energy steps. Higher-rank separable potentials are used in the¹ s ₀ wave and in the³ s ₁—³ d ₁ waves, while rank-1 separable potentials are used in¹ p ₁,³ p _0,1,2 ¹ d ₂ ³ d _2,3 waves. The calculation is compared with experiments for the total cross section, the total break-up cross section, the differential cross section and the analyzing power of neutron-deuteron scattering. The improvements in the agreement as compared to previous calculations are impressive in many cases. Especially, the calculated total cross section agrees with the experiment below 30 MeV within the error bars, which are as small as 1%. A discussion on the numerical accuracy is given. General aspects of the calculated cross section are discussed. It is pointed out that thes-wave asymptotic normalization of the deuteron wave function (A _s ) is important.