An approximate three-body theory of deuteron stripping

A treatment of deuteron stripping is developed in which the three-body effects associated with deuteron break-up in the nuclear field are included explicitly. The essence of the method is the choice of a convenient discrete set of n-p eigenfunctions as a representation of the three-body continuum effects. This approach leads to a distorted wave stripping matrix element similar to that of the DWBA, except that the elastic deuteron wave is replaced by a three-body wave function given as the solution of a set of coupled two-body Schrödinger equations. The adiabatic theory of Johnson and Soper appears as the solution in a suitable first approximation. This new formalism should prove useful in the evaluation of corrections to three-body models of the deuteron-nucleus system, in particular those models in which the nucleon-target interaction is represented by a complex local optical potential.