Non-monotonic potential description of alpha–Zr refractive elastic scattering

Abstract

Experimental differential cross sections of α elastic scattering by 90Zr in the 15.0–141.7 MeV range of the bombarding energies have been analysed within the framework of an optical model using non-monotonic (NM) potentials. These potentials are generated from the energy-density functional theory using a realistic two-nucleon potential coupled with an appropriate consideration of the Pauli principle. The NM nature of the real part of the potential seems to be gradually diminishing at energies beyond 118.0 MeV. The Airy structure of the nuclear rainbow scattering data in the energy range of 79.5–141.7 MeV is for the first time well accounted for by the shallow NM potential. Two potential families, which are located in the real part, bear a linear variation of a volume integral in the energy range 25.0–141.7 MeV with a threshold anomaly at the lower energies. The potential contains an interior repulsive part that, with energy, shifts towards the surface and gradually weakens until it is almost lost in the nuclear surface. The requirement of a deep attractive real part of the nuclear potential seems to be generally non-stringent for describing the nuclear rainbow oscillations. Some discrete ambiguities in the potentials seem to persist even when the ‘exponential falloff’ in the angular distribution following the ‘rainbow angle’ is well reproduced in this investigation using the NM real part of the optical potentials.