Target excitations and the optical potential for protons scattering from nuclei

We calculate the contributions to the optical potential for 30 MeV protons due to inelastic excitations of the target nucleus. The scattering due to this non-local potential is calculated exactly and some of the results subjected to conventional optical model analysis. When only one excited state is included, a resonant dependence on the excitation energy is observed. Even with ten excited states, the position of a single one can strongly influence the scattering. It is possible to account for about $\text{3}\text{4}$ of the observed absorption in ⁴⁰Ca and ²⁰⁸Pb, but only by postulating unobserved states which exhaust the remainder of the experimental sum rules at somewhat unreasonably low energies. It was not possible to find simple local potentials which gave the same scattering because of the strong L-dependence of the absorption. The constructed potentials concentrate the absorption at too small radii. It is suggested that rearrangement (pick-up) processes contribute a substantial amount of absorption at larger radii, while compound formation will give rise to a volume term in the imaginary potential.