Elastic proton scattering off non-zero spin nuclei

• Published in: arXiv.org 2022-01
• Main Authors: Vorabbi, Matteo, Gennari, Michael, Finelli, Paolo, Giusti, Carlotta, Navrátil, Petr, Machleidt, Ruprecht
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Elastic scattering; Inelastic scattering; Nuclei; Nucleons; Projectiles; Proton scattering; Quantum numbers
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2110.05455

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.