Off-Shell Structures of Nucleon-Nucleon t-matrices and their Influence on Nucleon-Nucleus Elastic Scattering Observables

The sensitivity of nucleon-nucleus elastic scattering observables to the offshell structure of nucleon-nucleon t-matrices, derived from realistic NN potentials, is investigated within the context of a full-folding model based on the impulse approximation. Our study uses recently developed NN potential models, which describe a subset of the NN data base with a χ2 per datum ∼1, which means that the NN t-matrices are essentially on-shell equivalent. We calculate proton-nucleus elastic scattering observables for 16O, 40Ca, and 208Pb between 100 and 200 MeV laboratory energy. We find that the elastic scattering observables are insensitive to off-shell differences of the employed NN t-matrices. A more detailed investigation of the scattering equation and the optical potential as given in a factorized approximation reveals that the elastic scattering observables do not sample the NN t-matrices very far offshell where they exhibit differences. PACS: 25.40.Cm, 24.10-Ht Typeset using REVTEX