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The contribution of the nucleon-pole piece of the pion-nucleon amplitude to the pion-nucleus optical potential is examined. Straightforward calculations of diagrams which are intermediate between Goldstone and Feynman diagrams produce simple results with well-behaved physical implications. In particular, the direct S-channel nucleon pole contributes to one-body true absorption while the crossed U-channel pole has a novel off-shell behavior and does not contribute to pion true absorption.

A model for the resonant pion-nucleon D- and F-waves is developed which assumes that the pion-plus-nucleon couples to a resonance and that the resonance can serve as a doorway to the inelastic channels. With the use of simple form factors, the model is capable of reproducing the pion-nucleon phase shifts up to an energy of T π = 1.4 GeV if the coupling of the elastic channel to the inelastic channels is taken from data as input into the model. A value for the mass of the resonance that would result in the absence of the coupling to decay channels is extracted from the data utilizing the model. This is the mass that is most easily modeled by bag models. For the non-resonant D- and F-wave channels a separable potential model is used. This model, like the resonance model, is developed utilizing the invariant amplitude which is free of kinematic singularities and uses invariant norms and phase spaces. The model is also applied to the S-wave channels. A relation between the resonance model and the Chew-Low model is discovered and used to derive an extended Chew-Low model which is applied to the P 13 , P 31 , and P 33 channels. Implications of the model for understanding the range of the pion-nucleon interaction and the dynamic structure of the interaction are presented.

In this Final Technical Report, the authors summarize the research activities of the three Principal Investigators (Professors Ernst, Oberacker, and Umar) at Vanderbilt University since the last reporting period through the subject award expiration date (Dec. 31, 1996) under contract DE-FG05-87ER40376 with the Department of Energy. The research effort is divided between the following three areas: nuclear structure and astrophysics (microscopic nuclear structure studies and properties of exotic nuclei at HRIBF, supernovae calculations in connection with nuclear astrophysics, and nuclear viscosity studies via muon-induced fission at PSI); pion and kaon interactions with the nucleus at high energies (interaction of pions and kaons with nuclei from low energies to 1 GeV, propagation of excited hadrons in the nuclear medium as probed by pion and electron induced reactions); nuclear physics at high energies (dynamical string-parton model to study multi-particle production at RHIC, electromagnetic lepton pair production at RHIC).

This report contains a collection of papers on pion-nucleus interactions that were written as part of the long-range planning process of LAMPF that took place in spring, 1989. These papers served as the basis of the pion portion of a report to the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) for its Long Range Plan. They were read and discussed in some detail by the pion physics community and represent the views of the present and the future of pion physics by the authors and to a great extent by the pion physics community as a whole.