Comparison of several equivalent local potentials for microscopic nonlocal Nα potentials

Abstract

The phase shifts obtained in the Perey-Saxon, Horiuchi and Peierls-Vinh Mau approximations for the microscopic nonlocal Nα interaction of Lassaut and Vinh Mau have been compared at 10 and 20 MeV to the exact results, without the customary approximation of Perey and Buck, which neglects part of the angular dependence of the nonlocality and is inadequate. We have also compared the equivalent local potentials with the corresponding local wave functions and damping factors to their exact wronskian counterparts and obtained the corresponding nonlocal wave functions as a product of the approximate local wave function and the damping factor in all cases. The results show that of all the approximations the Peierls-Vinh Mau approximation is the most accurate one for s-waves and that the Perey-Saxon approximation is inadequate for Nα scattering. The accuracy of all the approximations is dependent on the degree of repulsiveness of the effective nuclear force. For the exact wronskian equivalent local potential and damping factor however, we reproduce the exact nonlocal wave function to high accuracy in all cases, confirming the accuracy of our numerical methods. The implications for nuclear reactions where the off-shell behaviour of the Nα interaction is important are discussed.