Method of orthogonalized distorted waves in the theory of three-particle scattering

A new distorted-wave formalism is proposed in the three-body problem. It leads to the distorted wave Born approximation for reactions with rearrangement. To improve the convergence of the iterations of the obtained modified Faddeev equations with distorting potentials, the method of orthogonal projection is used. This leads to an improved Born approximation with orthogonalized distorted waves and makes it possible to do without the procedure of fitting the parameters of the distorting potentials to the experimental data. The proposed formalism automatically leads to regularization of the Faddeev equations with Coulomb interactions below the three-particle threshold.