A study of the 2H(d,p)3H AND 2H(d,n)3He reactions and the excited state of 4He at 23.9 MeV

The relative differential cross sections have been measured for the ²H(d, p)³H and the ²H(d, n)³He reactions from 300 keV to 700 keV in 50 keV steps. Angular distributions of all charged particles from the reactions were taken from 20° to 160° in the laboratory system. Energy-dependent asymmetry coefficients from the expansion of the centre-of-mass angular distributions in terms of even powers of cos θ were obtained as were the branching ratios between the two reaction modes. The different energy dependences of the moments of the two cross sections were used to test the need for the existence of a recently reported T = 0 state in ⁴He.