Microscopic description of low-energy neutron scattering by nuclei

The Bloch and Gillet shell-model formalism extended to continuum states is applied to lowenergy neutron scattering by nuclei. It is shown that complete antisymmetrization leads in the r-representation to corrective terms which yield important corrections to the scattering lengths. Calculations are performed within a model restricted configuration space for the target nuclei ¹²C, ¹³C, ¹⁶O, ¹⁷O and ⁴⁰Ca. We predict values for the spin-dependent scattering amplitude for ¹³C and ¹⁷O. The antisymmetrization problem in the case of a large configuration mixing is studied for the ¹⁹F target nucleus. The resonant effects of the compound nucleus are then very important and the results become very sensitive to the configuration space and the interaction parameters.