Corrigendum: Mott?Schwinger Effect in the Elastic Scattering of Neutrons from 209Bi

Abstract

The results presented in our recent paper are in error. All of the theoretical developments contained therein are correct but the Mott-Schwinger (MS) interaction was doubly counted for small radii in our computations. That had a significant effect upon the exact values of the small-f partial wave phase shifts. In fact, the correct variation of the first 20 partial wave phase shifts from purely nuclear scattering are much smaller than we presented before. Consequently the variation caused by the MS effect in predictions of the observables is smaller than previously indicated, and particularly so for scattering angles in excess of 20° for the cases of neutrons scattered from bismuth that were considered. At small angles, there are still characteristic and noticeable differences caused by the MS interaction for the scattering of 0·5, 14·5 and 24 MeV neutrons from 209Bi. With the differential cross section, the forward angle effect remains as shown previously; that is, dominated by the cot (~O) element in the scattering amplitudes due to the infinite partial wave sum of MS phase contributions. But the deviations to the higher angle cross sections reported earlier are very much reduced. The major effects of the correction, however, are with the predictions of the spin-dependent measureables and the exact results for P(O) and the two general variables, Xvar(O) and Yvar(O).