Alpha-Particle-Induced Breakup of the Deuteron

Alpha-particle-induced deuteron breakup reactions have been studied in single-counter measurements at incident alpha-particle energies of 41.6 and 29.3 MeV. Simultaneous differential and total cross-section measurements have been carried out on protons, deuterons, and alpha particles. Unambiguous evidence for final-state resonance effects in the alpha-nucleon interactions have been obtained, particularly from the proton energy spectra; the $p_{\frac{3}{2}}$ alpha-nucleon resonances corresponding to the ${\mathrm{He}}^5$ and ${\mathrm{Li}}^5$ ground states play important roles. As anticipated, phase-space-factor and zero-range Born-approximation calculations failed to reproduce the observed energy spectra. A more exact analysis which explicitly includes the alpha-nucleon interactions, represented by Gammel-Thaler phenomenological potentials, does provide good agreement with the experimental results both in spectrum shape and in total breakup cross section.