Some elements of nuclear scattering theory

Abstract

It is the purpose of this chapter to lay the theoretical foundation for the developments to follow in chapters 5 to 8. Although we collect here some of the formulas needed later, it is not our main aim to present a short introduction to formal scattering theory. On the contrary, we try to explain the physical concepts associated with the optical model, direct reactions, compound-nucleus processes etc. in a rather simple and intuitive fashion. This leads us to the decomposition of cross sections into direct and fluctuating parts which is rather fundamental for all that follows. For simplicity of presentation, we begin in section 4.1 with elastic scattering. The extension of the concepts to inelastic scattering in section 4.2 is then quite straightforward.