Effects of relativistic kinematics in heavy ion elastic scattering

TL;DR

This paper investigates how relativistic kinematic corrections influence the modeling of elastic scattering in heavy ion collisions at energies between 20 and 100 MeV/nucleon, highlighting their importance in angular distribution predictions.

Contribution

It introduces relativistic corrections to reaction kinematics in optical model calculations for heavy ion elastic scattering at intermediate energies.

Findings

Relativistic corrections significantly affect angular distribution modeling.

Corrections have minimal impact on total reaction cross sections within studied energy range.

Effects are notable at energies as low as 40 MeV/nucleon.

Abstract

Relativistic corrections to the reaction kinematic parameters were made for elastic scattering of \nuc{6}{Li}, \nuc{12}{C} and \nuc{40}{Ar} from \nuc{40}{Ca}, \nuc{90}{Zr}, and \nuc{208}{Pb} targets at incident energies between 20 and 100 MeV/nucleon. Results of optical model calculations show that the effects of such corrections are important in describing the angular distributions of elastic scattering cross sections for heavy ion scattering at incident energies as low as around 40 MeV/nucleon. The effects on the total reaction cross sections on the other hand, were found to be small within the energy range studied when the optical model potential is fixed.