Elastic proton scattering off non-zero spin nuclei

TL;DR

This paper extends a microscopic optical potential model for elastic nucleon-nucleus scattering to include non-zero spin nuclei, demonstrating good agreement with experimental data and setting the stage for inelastic scattering studies.

Contribution

The work introduces a formalism that incorporates target nucleus spin into the microscopic optical potential using chiral forces, enhancing the model's applicability.

Findings

Excellent agreement with experimental scattering data.

Reliable estimates of theoretical uncertainties.

Framework ready for inelastic scattering applications.

Abstract

In recent years, we constructed a microscopic optical potential (OP) for elastic nucleon-nucleus ($NA$) scattering using modern approaches based on chiral theories for the nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interaction. The OP was derived at first order of the spectator expansion in Watson multiple scattering theory and its final expression was a folding integral between the $NN$ $t$ matrix and the nuclear density of the target. Two- and three-body forces are consistently included both in the target and in the projectile description. The purpose of this work is to apply our microscopic OP to nuclei characterized by a ground state of spin-parity quantum numbers $J^\pi \ne 0^+$. We extended our formalism to include the spin of the target nucleus. The full amplitudes of the $NN$ reaction matrix are retained in the calculations starting from two- and three-body chiral forces. We show a remarkable agreement with experimental data for the available observables and, simultaneously, provide reliable estimates for the theoretical uncertainties. This work paves the way toward a full microscopic approach to inelastic $NA$ scattering, showing that the derivation of optical potentials between states with $J^\pi \ne 0^+$ is completely under control.