What Have We Learned About Three-nucleon Systems at Intermediate Energies?

In the past few years, a program has been set up at KVI to study the effects of three-nucleon forces in various reactions. Several observables in elastic and break-up channels in proton-deuteron scattering have been measured and compared with state-of-the-art Faddeev calculations using modern two-body forces and a number of three-body forces. For the elastic scattering process, the data-base is now large enough to perform a partial wave analysis to provide an unambiguous description of nuclear forces. For the break-up reaction, data are emerging at intermediate energies revealing interesting aspects of nuclear forces.