# The neutron skin thickness of $^{48}$Ca from a nonlocal-dispersive-optical-model analysis

## TL;DR

This paper uses a nonlocal dispersive-optical-model to analyze neutron and proton interactions in $^{48}$Ca, accurately determining the neutron skin thickness and its impact on scattering cross sections.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel application of nonlocal dispersive-optical-model analysis to extract neutron skin thickness in $^{48}$Ca from scattering data.

## Key findings

- Neutron skin thickness of 0.249±0.023 fm in $^{48}$Ca.
- Strong sensitivity of neutron total cross sections to skin thickness.
- Charge and matter distributions derived from self-energies.

## Abstract

A nonlocal dispersive-optical-model analysis has been carried out for neutrons and protons in $^{48}$Ca. Elastic-scattering angular distributions, total and reaction cross sections, single-particle energies, the neutron and proton numbers, and the charge distribution have been fitted to extract the neutron and proton self-energies both above and below the Fermi energy. From the single-particle propagator resulting from these self-energies we have determined the charge and neutron matter distributions in $^{48}$Ca. A neutron skin of 0.249$\pm$0.023~fm is deduced. The energy dependence of the total neutron cross sections is shown to have strong sensitivity to the skin thickness.