Complete Glauber calculations for proton–nucleus inelastic cross sections

Abstract

We perform a parameter-free calculation for the high-energy proton–nucleus scattering based on the Glauber theory. A complete evaluation of the so-called Glauber amplitude is made by using the factorization of the single-particle wave functions. The multiple-scattering or multistep processes are fully taken into account within the Glauber theory. We demonstrate that proton-12C, 20Ne, and 28Si elastic and inelastic scattering (Jπ=0+→2+ and 0+→4+) processes are very well described in a wide range of the incident energies from ∼50 MeV to ∼1 GeV. We evaluate the validity of a simple one-step approximation and find that the approximation works fairly well for the inelastic 0+→2+ processes but not for 0+→4+ where the multistep processes become more important. As an application, we quantify the difference between the total reaction and interaction cross sections of proton-12C, 20Ne, and 28Si collisions.