Polarization of Nucleons Elastically Scattered from Nuclei

Abstract

The polarization $P$ of nucleons elastically scattered from nuclei has been calculated for the nuclear potential of Woods and Saxon which has the radial dependence $\frac{1}{\{1+\exp [\frac{(r-r_0)}{a}]}\}$, where $r_0$ is the nuclear radius and the parameter $a$ determines the length of the exponential tail. The variation of $P$ with the optical parameter $\frac{k_1}{K}$ and the strength of the spin-orbit coupling was investigated for the case of Al. In general, $P$ remains positive throughout the first diffraction minimum. For the Berkeley data for the polarization of 300-Mev protons scattered from Al, a reasonable fit has been obtained inside the first diffraction peak. The functions $\beta$ and $R$ introduced by Wolfenstein to describe the asymmetry in a triple scattering experiment are evaluated for several cases.