Utility of antiproton-nucleus scattering for probing nuclear surface density distributions

Abstract

Antiproton-nucleon (pN ) total cross sections are typically 3-4 times larger than the N N ones at incident energies from a few hundreds to thousands MeV. We investigate antiproton-nucleus scattering as it could work as a probe of the nuclear structure giving the sensitivity differently from a proton probe. High-energy antiproton-nucleus reactions are reasonably described by the Glauber model with a minimal profile function that reproduces the pN and p-12 C cross section data. In contrast to the proton-nucleus scattering, we find that the complete absorption occurs even beyond the nuclear radius due to the large pN elementary cross sections, which shows stronger sensitivity to the nuclear density distribution in the tail region. This sensitivity is quantified in the total reaction cross sections with various density profiles for future measurement including neutron-rich unstable nuclei.