Coulomb excitation of the giant dipole resonance in hadron scattering

The excitation of the isovector giant dipole resonance by the Coulomb force is investigated within a DWBA approach using analytic forms for the asymptotic Coulomb integrals. Scattering of d, ³He and α-particles from ²⁰⁸Pb is discussed for which recently small-angle data have been published. For most scattering systems dipole excitation is small; the inclusion of nuclear form factors gives rise to a large interference between Coulomb and nuclear excitation. A strong increase of Coulomb excitation at higher incident energies is obtained.