Nuclear radius deduced from proton diffraction by a black nucleus

Abstract

We find a new method to deduce nuclear radii from proton-nucleus elastic scattering data. In this method a nucleus is viewed as a ``black'' sphere. A diffraction pattern of protons by this sphere is equivalent to that of the Fraunhofer diffraction by a circular hole of the same radius embedded in a screen. We determine the black sphere radius in such a way as to reproduce the empirical value of the angle of the observed first diffraction peak. It is useful to identify this radius multiplied by $\sqrt{3/5}$ with the root-mean-square matter radius of the target nucleus. For most of stable isotopes of masses heavier than 50, it agrees, within the error bars, with the values that were deduced in previous elaborate analyses from the data obtained at proton incident energies higher than $\sim 800$ MeV.

5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review C

References in corpus (5)

• Neutron Densities from a Global Analysis of Medium Energy Proton Nucleus Elastic Scattering
• Saturation of nuclear matter and radii of unstable nuclei
• Surface tension in a compressible liquid-drop model: Effects on nuclear density and neutron skin thickness
• Proton-nucleus elastic scattering and the equation of state of nuclear matter
• Determination of Matter Surface Distribution of Neutron-rich Nuclei

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Systematic analysis of reaction cross sections of carbon isotopes
• Formula for proton-nucleus reaction cross section at intermediate energies and its application
• Nuclear surface diffuseness revealed in nucleon-nucleus diffraction
• Imprint of nuclear bubble in nucleon-nucleus diffraction
• Reaction cross section described by a black sphere approximation of nuclei
• Difference between interaction cross sections and reaction cross sections
• Proton inelastic diffraction by a black nucleus and the size of excited nuclei
• Symmetry energy, unstable nuclei, and neutron star crusts
• Utility of antiproton-nucleus scattering for probing nuclear surface density distributions
• Incomplete absorption reactions at high energy