Khoa, D.T. ; von Oertzen, W. ; Bohlen, H.G.: Probing the equation of state of nuclear matter in the nuclear rainbow scattering. International Journal of Modern Physics B 22 (2008), p. 4684-4696
Abstract:
We present a brief overview of the light wave interference in the atmospheric rainbow and how a similar mechanism can be observed in the elastic nucleus-nucleus scattering, which gives rise to the nuclear rainbow. The latter phenomenon, observed at energies of around few tens MeV/nucleon, has been well investigated based on the basic concepts of the nuclear optical model. Given a weak absorption associated with the nuclear rainbow scattering, the observed data can be used to probe the density dependence of the effective nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction based on the folding model study of elastic scattering. Most of the rainbow scattering data were found to be best described by a density dependent NN interaction, which gives a nuclear incompressibility K ~ 260 MeV in the Hartree-Fock calculation of nuclear matter. This result implies a rather soft equation of state of nuclear matter.