Diffractive,refractive and interference effects in heavy ion elastic scattering

The elastic scattering amplitude is divided into contributions arising from the “near” and “far” sides of the interaction region. Each of these contributions is further divided into a diffractive component arising from strong absorption and refractive components arising from the repulsive Coulomb and attractive nuclear fields. Damped orbiting of the projectile around the target is also allowed for. Simple closed form expressions are derived for the various contributions by assuming specific forms for the elastic scattering matrix. The results are discussed by analysing several typical elastic scattering data.