Difference between interaction cross sections and reaction cross sections

TL;DR

This paper examines the difference between interaction and reaction cross sections at relativistic energies, revealing significant discrepancies especially in small nuclei, and introduces a phenomenological model to analyze this difference.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the difference between interaction and reaction cross sections is substantial at relativistic energies for small nuclei, and develops a model to estimate this difference using limited empirical data.

Findings

Significant difference (0-100 mb) between interaction and reaction cross sections for stable projectiles on carbon.

The difference is especially large in small mass number nuclei.

Constructed pseudo data using a black-sphere model to analyze the cross section differences.

Abstract

We revisit the commonly accepted notion that the difference between interaction and reaction cross sections is negligible at relativistic energies, and show that, especially in small mass number region, it is large enough to help probe nuclear structure. For analyses of the difference, we construct "pseudo data" for the reaction cross sections using a phenomenological black-sphere model of nuclei since empirical data are very limited at high energies. The comparison with the empirical interaction cross sections suggests a significant difference between the reaction and interaction cross sections for stable projectiles on a carbon target, which is of the order of 0-100 mb.