The determination of the nuclear ground state and transition charge density from measured electron scattering data

The evaluation of elastic and inelastic electron scattering cross sections is discussed in terms of the Fourier-Bessel expansion of the nuclear ground state and transition charge density, respectively. The method allows one to deduce the charge distributions and the moments as well as the corresponding errors, which originate on the one hand from the uncertainties in the measured data and on the other hand from the lack of knowledge about the large-q behaviour of the form factors; these two contributions are determined separately. The method is described and proved with an evaluation of pseudodata and then applied to ²⁰⁸Pb cross sections. For this nucleus, detailed results concerning the possible structure of the charge density are presented.