Ion-Ion Potentials and the Compressibility of Nuclear Matter

With a schematic model for the nuclear matter we give a unified treatment of the real and imaginary parts of the elastic ${\mathrm{O}}^{16}$-${\mathrm{O}}^{16}$ scattering potential. The model connects the parameters of the potential with the density and binding properties of the ${\mathrm{O}}^{16}$-${\mathrm{O}}^{16}$ system and reproduces the structure of the excitation function quite well. It is shown that the nuclear compressibility can be obtained from the scattering data, and in the case of the ${\mathrm{S}}^{32}$ compound system there results an effective compressibility (finite quenching of the nuclei) of about 200 MeV.