Eikonal expansion in electron scattering

We extend a previously developed eikonal expansion method to the case of high-energy electron scattering from dynamic nuclei. Nuclear degrees of freedom can be included either by a DWBA-like expansion or by neglecting the nuclear excitation energies. The latter approach is considered in detail and applied to the elastic and inelastic scattering from deformed nuclei. The impact parameterT-matrix is calculated by diagonalizing the inelastic zeroth-order and first-order eikonal phases in the subspace of the nuclear rotational levels; static eikonal phases are included up to second order. For¹⁵²Sm,¹⁵⁴Sm coupled-channel calculations including three and four rotational states show large multi-step effects for the 0⁺→4⁺ and the 0⁺→6⁺ excitations compared to DWBA results.