Radiative corrections to elastic electron-carbon scattering cross sections in comparison with experiment

TL;DR

This paper revisits radiative corrections to elastic electron-carbon scattering, incorporating nuclear excitations and nonperturbative QED effects, revealing energy-dependent agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces an updated model including nuclear giant resonance excitations and nonperturbative QED corrections for more accurate scattering cross section predictions.

Findings

Qualitative agreement at 200 MeV

Dispersion effects are small at higher energies

Model limitations at energies above 200 MeV

Abstract

The influence of dispersion on the differential scattering cross section in the vicinity of the first diffraction minimum is revisited for collision energies between 200 and 450 MeV. Transient nuclear excitations in the giant resonance region with angular momentum L \leq 3 are taken into consideration within updated numerics. Moreover, the deviations of the nonperturbative QED corrections from the conventionally used smooth Born predictions are accounted for. A qualitative agreement with the measurements is only obtained for the lowest energy, while dispersion within the present model is too small at the higher energies.