Inelastic scattering 22 MeV proton from 238U has been studied. Angular distributions of the states of the rotational band have been measured. Coupled-channel analysis allows determination of the deformation parameters/32,/34 and/36. These values are somewhat in disagreement with other experimental results.Recent Hartree-Fock calculations of nuclear shapes have focussed renewed interest on the determination of nuclear shapes. In particular calculations have been systematically made in the actinide region by Quentin [1]. At the same time new experiments have been found to be extremely useful in the determination of multipole deformations of nuclei in this region. These experiments included inelastic scattering of protons [2], a-particles [3,4], neutrons [5] and electrons I-6] as well as Coulomb excitation 1-7, 8]. The X-ray emission of muonic atoms in the same nuclear region has also been studied [9]. The rotational spectrum of uranium allows the use of the simple rotor model with a radius given in terms of the usual deformation parameters /3L by R = R 0 (1 + fi2 ]120 + fi4 Y4o + fi6 Y60), where the YLO are the spherical harmonics. Table 1 presents the most recent values of these deformation parameters deduced in this model. Analysing these results, there appear to be important disagreements, in particular between the proton scattering result [2] and the others. In view of this disagreement, we have measured angular distributions for the z3SU(p,p') reaction at 22MeV incident proton energy.
* On leave from Alberta University, Edmonton, CanadaThe experiment was performed using the Orsay MP Tandem. The target was 100~tg.cm -z of natural uranium obtained by evaporation on a 20 gg. cm-2 carbon backing. The scattered protons were detected using a position sensitive silicon counter of 2,000 ~tm thickness at the focal plane of a split-pole spectrograph. The small energy spread of the incident beam and the high resolution of the detection system yielded an overall resolution of 10 keV at forward angles. The measurements are limited to angles greater than 25 ~ for the other excited states. This limit is due to the contamination of the target by oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. The angular distribution for all states were measured up to 100 ~ . The angular distributions have been measured for the 0 +, 2 +, 4 + and 6 + members of the ground state rotational band. A coupled-channel analysis was performed using the ECIS code [10] of Raynal. The interaction potential arises from the deformation of the real and imaginary central potential, the spinorbit potential as derived by Sherif and Blair (full Thomas form) and the Coulomb potential. Initial optical-model parameters for the coupled-channel calculations were obtained by fitting only the elastic scattering cross-sections using the search code Magali of Raynal [10]. These parameters were then adjusted to preserve the fits to the elastic crosssection as coupling was added in the coupled-channel