Nuclear transparency in (e,e’p) reactions

The transparency of nuclei to propagating protons in the (e,e’p) reaction has been calculated within the distorted-wave impulse approximation. This framework is commonly employed to describe the final-state interaction in knockout reactions, using phenomenologically determined optical-model potentials. The calculations reproduce measured transparencies for a range of nuclei. This lends support to the treatment of the final state interaction in (e,e’p) analyses, and therefore to the spectroscopic factors derived from such analyses. Since the transparency data can also be described by many-body calculations which include correlations of the struck proton with the remaining nucleons and other medium effects, it is also concluded that such many-body effects are effectively included in the optical-model calculations