Proton--induced deuteron breakup at GeV energies with forward emission of a fast proton pair

A study of the deuteron breakup reaction $pd \to (pp)n$ with forward emission of a fast proton pair with small excitation energy $E_{pp}<$ 3 MeV has been performed at the ANKE spectrometer at COSY--J\"ulich. An exclusive measurement was carried out at six proton--beam energies $T_p=$~0.6,~0.7,~0.8,~0.95,~1.35, and 1.9 GeV by reconstructing the momenta of the two protons. The differential cross section of the breakup reaction, averaged up to $8^{\circ}$ over the cm polar angle of the total momentum of the $pp$ pairs, has been obtained. Since the kinematics of this process is quite similar to that of backward elastic $pd \to dp$ scattering, the results are compared to calculations based on a theoretical model previously applied to the $pd \to dp$ process.