The off-shell properties of two-nucleon t matrices are studied for both uncoupled and coupled channels. Complex t matrices have been obtained using both matrix inversion and continued fraction techniques of solution and predicated upon a standard phenomenological form (Reid), a meson exchange model (Paris), and a new phenomenological form that we have developed, of the two-nucleon interaction. The off-shell t matrices from these interactions are very similar whenever they give essentially the same phase shifts at all energies. When they do not, the associated off-shell t matrices diverge so substantially that any data depending upon these off-shell t matrices will differentiate between the interactions.

• Received 5 May 1987

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.37.934