On high-energy elastic scattering of protons by nuclei☆

Abstract The two coupled channel formalism for high energy elastic scattering [1] is extended to include spin and isospin effects. For a spin and isospin zero nucleus these manifest themselves by additional spin-orbit terms in the potentials. Explicit formulas for these potentials are obtained in terms of the fully spin and isospin dependent nucleon-nucleon scattering amplitude, the ground state nuclear form factor and the state dependent correlation functions. The coupling potential except for a small term arising from double spin and isospin flip process involving nuclear excitation depends only upon the pair correlations. Numerical calculations are performed for the elastic scattering of 1 GeV protons incident on 4 He. Various phenomenological dynamical two-body correlations as well as correlations generated from the Reid soft-core and Tabakin potentials in an approximate Brueckner-Hartree-Fock calculation are considered. The angular distribution beyond its first diffraction minimum as well as the polarization in the same angular range are shown to be sensitive to these correlations. However, the present accuracy of the experimental data and the lack of knowledge of the nucleon-nucleon scattering amplitude prevent any definitive conclusion about their nature.