Nuclear transparency in the Glauber impulse approximation

Abstract

We carefully construct a formalism, called the Glauber impulse approximation, for describing nuclear transparency for the semi-exclusive process of high-energy proton quasi-elastic scattering from nuclei. The formalism is based on the conventional multiple-scattering theory and uses the Glauber theory with impulse approximation. In the heavy nuclear limit, our formalism yields the familiar formula for the process based on the mean-free-path argument, except that the reaction cross section appears instead of the total cross section. Our nuclear transparency is thus larger than what could naively have been expected. The nuclear transparency calculated for various nuclei, agrees with the observation in overall magnitude, but fails to explain the energy variation.