Proton-Nucleus Total Reaction Cross Sections in the Optical Limit Glauber Theory: Subtle Dependence on the Equation of State of Nuclear Matter

Abstract

We calculate the proton-nucleus total reaction cross sections at different energies of incident protons within the optical limit approximation of the Glauber theory. The isospin effect has been taken into account. The nucleon distribution is obtained in the framework of macroscopic nuclear models in a way depending on the equation of state of uniform nuclear matter near the saturation density. We find that at an energy of order 40 MeV, the reaction cross section calculated for neutron- rich isotopes significantly increases as the parameter L characterizing the density dependence of the symmetry energy increases, while at energies of order 300 and 800 MeV, it is almost independent of L. This is a feature of the optical limit Glauber theory in which an exponential dependence of the reaction cross section on the neutron skin thickness remains when the total proton-neutron cross section is small enough.