Elastic scattering of 15 MeV deuterons

Differential cross sections and vector and tensor analyzing powers of 15 MeV deuterons elastically scattered by ⁵²Cr, ⁹⁰Zr and ¹²²Sn have been analyzed in terms of an optical potential containing a tensor term T_R. Neglecting any tensor interactions the differential cross section and vector analyzing power data were well reproduced but only qualitative agreement was obtained with the corresponding tensor analyzing power measurements. The inclusion of a T_R potential only slightly improved the fits to the tensor data. The quantity T₂₁ was found to impose greater restrictions than T₂₀ and T₂₂ on the parameters of the T_R potential. It appears that the conventional optical model has some difficulty in providing an overall description of the data.