Scattering of dressed nucleons in the nuclear medium

The scattering process of nucleons in nuclear matter is studied. After a review of the conventional asymptotic analysis of the two-body propagator in coordinate space, the modifications of this analysis due to the dressing of the scattering nucleons is developed. While the scattering energy singles out a unique (on-shell) momentum in the relative wave function of free or mean-field nucleons, this uniqueness is lost for dressed nucleons. The resulting distribution of momenta in the corresponding relative wave function leads to a localization in coordinate space of the influence of the scattering process on the relative motion of nucleons. An analytic approximation to the noninteracting propagator of the dressed nucleons is utilized to illustrate these points. As a consequence of the localization the scattered wave is damped and the particles no longer remember their scattering event beyond some finite distance.