Elastic scattering of high-energy α particles on nuclei

Abstract

Working within the framework of Glauber multiple scattering theory, an expansion for the S matrix for elastic nucleus-nucleus scattering is proposed in which the first term corresponds to the well known optical-limit result and the others depend successively upon the two-, three- and other many-body densities of the two colliding nuclei. The expansion is applied to analyse the recent alpha -40Ca and alpha -12C elastic scattering data at 1.37 GeV. Using realistic ground-state densities for the colliding nuclei it is found that inclusion of the two-body density term in the analysis greatly improves the theoretical situation. In particular, the region of the first maximum in 40Ca is fairly well reproduced. Effects of the short-range correlation on the elastic angular distribution are studied and the feasibility of using high-energy alpha scattering as a tool for determining nuclear ground-state densities and correlations is discussed.