Dispersion relations and Glauber model for pion-deuteron scattering

Forward dispersion relations are used to calculate the real part of the elastic amplitude for forward pion-deuteron scattering. The same real part is also calculated from the Galuber multiple scattering model. The results of the two approaches are critically compared in the light of present experiments. A theoretically deduced value for the pion-deuteron scattering length is also given. A theoretical prediction for the pion-deuteron total cross section for energies below 450 MeV is found to agree rather well with experiments.