Effects of the polarizability in elastic scattering below the Coulomb barrier

Abstract

We calculate the cross section for the scattering of two nuclei in the energy region below the Coulomb barrier. The Rutherford cross section is weakly influenced by nuclear interactions, screening, vacuum polarization and the nuclear polarizability. We find that it is possible to isolate in an unambiguous way the influence of nuclear polarizability, assuming that the effects of vacuum polarization and screening are rather well known. (This situation is similar to the one in the study of exotic atoms.) Our calculations show that the effect of the polarizability is rather large for deuterons scattered from heavy targets; furthermore, it can also not be neglected in the analysis of high-precision heavy-ion experiments. We study the quantum mechanical as well as the classical description of the elastic scattering and their deviation from Rutherford scattering. It is shown that for practical purposes the classical calculations are very accurate.