Can the Charge Symmetry of Nuclear Forces be Confirmed by Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering Experiments?

Abstract

The Coulomb interaction is subtracted from the proton-proton scattering data in the ${}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}S_0^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ partial wave. Contrary to traditional belief, the resulting nuclear effective-range parameters depend strongly on the unknown nuclear potential at small distances. The comparison between proton-proton and neutron-neutron data is therefore ambiguous.