Low-Energy Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering in a Three-Body Formalism

The $\mathrm{NN}\pi$ system is studied using the Faddeev theory of three-particle interactions and the approximation scheme due to Lovelace, which preserves bound-state and three-particle unitarity and uses separable potentials to describe off-shell two-particle scattering amplitudes. One-dimensional coupled integral equations are obtained for elastic nucleon-nucleon scattering which decouple in the $I=0\mathrm{}$, $S=0\mathrm{}$ state. The theory, which contains no arbitrary parameters, predicts phase shifts which are in reasonable agreement with experiment for the higher partial waves.