Empirical formula for total inelastic cross-section of proton-nucleus scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal empirical formula for calculating total inelastic proton-nucleus cross-sections across a wide energy range and various target nuclei, validated against experimental data and existing models.

Contribution

The paper presents a new empirical model that accurately predicts inelastic cross-sections for diverse nuclei over broad energies, based on extensive experimental data fitting.

Findings

The formula fits experimental data for targets from Deuterium to Uranium.

It effectively models cross-sections from 15 MeV to 1 TeV.

Comparison shows improved accuracy over existing models.

Abstract

We propose a generic empirical formula for total inelastic cross-sections for various target nuclei scattered by a proton at different energies, which is applicable over a wide range of energy from $15 ~MeV$ to $1~ TeV$. The proposed model is parameterized based on the fitting of extensively studied experimental cross-section data for the Aluminium and Carbon nucleus targets, considering factorization over high-energy and low-energy regimes. The parameters in high-energy formula are determined by the fitting of the high-energy saturation value of the inelastic scattering cross-section data with mass numbers. The universality of the empirical formula is investigated by comparing the model prediction with the experimental data of inelastic proton-nucleus scattering over a wide range from light elements such as Deuterium to heavy elements such as Uranium. A detailed comparison with the existing models and GEANT4 simulation is also presented.