Doorway state approach to optical potential scattering

Abstract

We extend and apply the doorway state approach in the context of optical potential scattering. This entalls construction of doorway basis states for resolving the transition operator. We focus on analytic solutions to comparatively simple problems in optical potential scattering. Both low and high energy limits are considered, and absorptive interactions are treated; both on- and off-shell partial wave amplitudes are constructed. Further, the full scattering amplitude in the high energy limit is calculated directly in the doorway expansion. With our analytic results, it is possible to identify the physical parameters controlling convergence of the doorway expansion. The same parameters apply over the entire range of cases studied. These parameters are related simply to the target geometry and to the interaction strength. For interactions appropriate to hadron-nucleus scattering, convergence of both on- and off-shell amplitudes is very rapid.