Symmetry and Coulomb corrections in light nuclear systems. [Below 20 MeV]

An approximation that describes the Coulomb-nuclear interference in a two-body manner is used to calculate vector analyzing powers in elastic p-d scattering and phase shifts for p-..cap alpha.. scattering. Comparison with experiments indicates that a good deal of the observed differences in charge-symmetric three- and five-nucleon reactions can be covered by Coulomb interference effects. Calculations for the four-nucleon system confirm this observation. It appears to be questionable that nuclear charge asymmetry has to be invoked to explain current experiments.