Inversion as a means of understanding nuclear potentials

Abstract

We have used inversion to link two quite different departures from M3Y folding model systematics to specific coupled channel effects. Evidence was presented to suggest that the systematic tendency for breakup to induce surface repulsion and interior attraction could influence nuclear size measurements with composite particles.

The local potential model of scattering has an important role to play in phenomenology because it is readily adapted to model independent fitting with elaborate searching procedures. As more of the information content of the data is fitted, the extracted potentials depart further from global potentials and we have considered what it means to take these departures as meaningful. Since it is difficult to put elaborate CRC calculations within search codes, and no complete calculable theory of nuclear scattering is in sight, one way of proceeding is to determine local potentials equivalent to S₂ derived from theoretical calculations. When such potentials are found they have identifiable features which correspond to characteristics of empirical model-independent potentials.

We have not presented an exhaustive list of the ways inversion can contribute to nuclear physics but it may be worth mentioning that they can always give an exact local equivalent to any non-local potential whenever the S₁ from the latter are known.