High-energy scattering of protons by nuclei

Abstract

The theory of high-energy hadron-nucleus collisions is discussed by means of the multiple-diffraction theory. Effects of the Coulomb field are accounted for in elastic scattering by light and heavy nuclei. Inelastic scattering is treated by means of the shadowed single collision approximation at small momentum transfer and the corresponding multiple collision expansion at large momentum transfers. The theory is compared with the measurements of Bellettini et al. on proton-nucleus scattering at 20 GeV/c by finding density distributions for the nuclei which provide least-squares fits to the data. The nucleon densities found are closely comparable in dimensions to the known charge densities. The predicted sums of the angular distributions of elastic and inelastic scattering reproduce the experimental angular distributions fairly closely.