Optical Model Analysis of Elastic Scattering of <sup>16</sup>O + <sup>12</sup>C

Abstract

This paper presents the optical model analysis of the elastic scattering of ¹⁶O + ¹²C at the incident energies of 608 and 1503 MeV using optical potentials derived from B3Y-Fetal effective interaction. Optical model (OM) analysis of the elastic data of this system at these incident energies has shown two of the four optical potentials, the DDB3Y1-Fetal (K=176 MeV) and BDB3Y1-Fetal (K=235 MeV), to give a better description of the elastic data than the BDB3Y2-and BDB3Y3-Fetal potentials, making them the best-fit folded potentials, in agreement with previous work done with the M3Y-Reid effective interaction in both identical and non-identical heavy ions. This is a conclusive and convincing confirmation of the concensus among Nuclear Physics scholars, based on OM analyses of heavy ions, that nuclear matter has an underlying soft equation of state. In addition, results of calculations herein have also shown the best-fit folded potentials, the DDB3Y1-and BDB3Y1-Fetal with-227.8 and-220.6 MeV at 608 MeV and-124.3 MeV and-120.5 MeV at 1503 MeV, respectively as the largest values at smaller inter-nuclear distances, to be in good agreement with their counterparts, the DDM3Y1-Reid and BDM3Y1-Reid, whose largest values at smaller inter-nuclear distances are-231.6 and-223.8 MeV at 608 MeV and-138.8 MeV and-134.2 MeV at 1503 MeV respec¬tively, in terms of magnitude, shape and trend. This is a further validation of the viability of the B3Y-Fetal, corroborating the findings of previous studies carried out with it. In the final analysis, the findings of this study have not shown the occurrence of distinctive features of refractive scattering such as Airy minima in the calculated cross sections at both 608 MeV and 1503 MeV in agreement with previous work.