The contribution of nuclear inelastic excitation to the optical potential for heavy ions

Using the plane-wave approximation we derive analytical expressions for both the real and imaginary parts of the polarization potential arising from nuclear inelastic scattering. These potentials and the resulting elastic and inelastic cross sections are compared with exact coupledchannel calculations for ¹³C on ⁴⁰Ca at 68 MeV. The agreement, for the most part, is good. We also briefly discuss the numerical non-local potentials for this system and the imaginary polarization potential for ¹⁶O on ²⁰⁸Pb at 104 MeV.