Nuclear surface diffuseness revealed in nucleon-nucleus diffraction

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that high-energy nucleon-nucleus elastic scattering data, especially the first diffraction peak, can reliably reveal nuclear surface diffuseness and radius, aiding studies of unstable nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract nuclear surface diffuseness and radius from diffraction peak data using the Glauber model, extending the black sphere concept.

Findings

Nuclear surface diffuseness can be inferred from diffraction peak data.

The method accurately extracts nuclear radius and diffuseness.

The approach is validated with realistic density distributions.

Abstract

Nuclear surface provides useful information on nuclear radius, nuclear structure as well as properties of nuclear matter. We discuss the relationship between the nuclear surface diffuseness and elastic scattering differential cross section at the first diffraction peak of high-energy nucleon-nucleus scattering as an efficient tool in order to extract the nuclear surface information from limited experimental data involving short-lived unstable nuclei. The high-energy reaction is described by a reliable microscopic reaction theory, the Glauber model. Extending the idea of the black sphere model, we find one-to-one correspondence between the nuclear bulk structure information and proton elastic scattering diffraction peak. This implies that we can extract both the nuclear radius and diffuseness simultaneously, using the position of the first diffraction peak and its magnitude of the elastic scattering differential cross section. We confirm the reliability of this approach by using realistic density distributions obtained by a mean-field model.