Mean-field description of nuclear charge density distributions

Abstract

We propose a method to extract nuclear charge distributions from elastic electron-scattering data based upon a mean-field approach. The nuclear charge distributions are generated by solving the Schrödinger equation with a mean-field potential expanded in terms of Hermite functions. The coefficients of the potential are changed in order to obtain the best fit with the cross-section data. Applications to the 12 C, 16 O, 40 Ca and 208 Pb nuclei are presented.