Unitary three-body calculation of nucleon-nucleon scattering

We calculate nucleon-nucleon elastic scattering phase parameters based on a unitary, relativistic, pion-exchange model. The results are highly dependent on the off-shell amplitudes of πN scattering. The isobar-dominated model for the P33 interaction leads to too small pion production rates owing to its strong suppression of off-shell pions. We propose to expand the idea of the Δ-isobar model in such a manner as to incorporate a background (non-pole) interaction. The two-potential model, which was first applied to the P11 partial wave by Mizutani and Koltun, is applied also to the P33 wave. Our phenomenological model for πN interaction in the P33 partial wave differs from the conventional model only in its off-shell extrapolation, and has two different variants for the πN → Δ vertex. The three-body approach of Kloet and Silbar is extended such that the background interactions can be included straightfowardly. We make detailed comparisons of the new model with the conventional one and find that our model adequately reproduces the 1D2 phase parameters as well as those of peripheral partial waves. We also find that the longitudinal total cross section difference ΔσL(pp → NNπ) comes closer to the data compared to Kloet and Silbar. We discuss about the backward pion propagation in the three-body calculation, and the Pauli-principle violating states for the background P11 interaction. (author)