Elastic electron scattering on exotic light proton-rich nuclei

Abstract

Recent experiments show that there may exist proton halos in exotic light proton-rich nuclei. We investigate the effect of an extended proton density distribution on the cross sections and form factors of elastic electron scattering from the exotic proton drip-line nuclei $^{28}\mathrm{S}$ and $^{12}\mathrm{O}$. With charge density distributions from the self-consistent relativistic mean field model, we calculate the cross sections and form factors for elastic electron scattering in the eikonal approximation. The numerical results are compared with the available data of the stable nuclei $^{32}\mathrm{S}$ and $^{16}\mathrm{O}$. The results show that the form factors and cross sections for elastic electron scattering at intermediate-momentum transfers are very sensitive to the alterations of the charge density distributions of the last protons in exotic nuclei $^{28}\mathrm{S}$ and $^{12}\mathrm{O}$. This is an interesting combination of the reliable relativistic mean field model with the model of electron-nucleus scattering and it can be useful for future experiments.