Systematics of Coulomb excitation with limited effects from nuclear distortion

A wide-ranging survey has been made of ($\alpha ,{\alpha }^{\prime }$) scattering from various target nuclei. Particular emphasis was given to determination of the departures of the cross section from Coulomb excitation, which are due mainly from nuclear interaction. The energy range in this study covers the region from the Coulomb barrier and downwards. Calculations were performed to first order only via the distorted-wave Born approximation method and the usual collective model was assumed. It is found that the inelastic scattering is more sensitive to the nuclear distortion than the elastic scattering, which conforms with results of recent experiments. A discussion is given of the Igo ambiguity in elastic and inelastic scattering near the barrier.