High-Energy Inelastic Scattering of Nucleons; The Distorted-Wave Impulse Approximation

The effects of distorted waves on the high-energy inelastic scattering of protons by ${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$ were investigated using the distorted-wave-impulse approximation. It was found that except for electric monopole transitions, the use of distorted waves results in a reduction of the peak differential cross section by a factor of 2 or 3, with little effect on the location or shape of the curve. It was also found that the presence of spin-orbit coupling in the distorting potential has a non-negligible effect on the proton polarization at some angles. The $2^{+}$ level of ${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$ at 4.43 MeV was treated in some detail in $L-S$ and $j-j$ coupling extremes to look at the relative effects of distortions on nonspin-flip and spin-flip matrix elements.