Coulomb potentials between spherical heavy ions

The Coulomb interaction between spherical nuclei having arbitrary radial nuclear charge distributions is calculated. All these realistic Coulomb potentials are given in terms of analytical expressions and are available for immediate application. So in no case a numerical computation of the Coulomb integral is required. The parameters of the charge distributions are taken from electron scattering analysis. The Coulomb self-energies of the charge distributions used are also calculated analytically in a closed form. For a number of nucleus-nucleus pairs, the Coulomb potentials derived from realistic charge distributions are compared with those normally used in various nucleus-nucleus optical model calculations. In this connection a detailed discussion of the problem how to choose consistently Coulomb parameters for different approximations is given.