The shape of the imaginary nuclear optical potential

Abstract

The effects of pairing correlations and the imaginary potential well at the nuclear surface are applied with volume absorption to the analysis of the elastic scattering of 19.2-Mev protons. from Fe/sup 56/. The imaginary potential has a gaussian shape plus a constant volume contribution determined by the ratio of the volume contribution to the peak of the gaussian. It is concluded that it is possible to fit elastic angular distributions using an imaginary form factor that agrees fairly well with the theoretical prediction, but that the elastic data alone is not sufficient to determine the shape of the imaginary potential. (R.E.U.)