A nonlocal optical potential with a Gaussian nonlocality for proton elastic scattering off light 1

In a recent work we used the nonlocal optical model of Perey and Buck (Nucl Phys A 32:353, 1962) to fit the angular distribution data corresponding to neutron elastic scattering off light nuclei from $$^6\hbox {Li}$$ to $$^{18}\hbox {O}$$ over the 9–35 MeV energy range. Although such nuclei posses diffuse edges that complicate the scattering process, the model resulted in improved angular distribution fits compared to those obtained using local optical models. In this work we extend the treatment to the case of proton elastic scattering off light 1p-shell nuclei, but consider the wider 10–70 MeV energy range. No single global set of nonlocal parameters adequately described the measured data across the entire energy range. Instead, we obtained two global sets of fixed nonlocal parameters; one corresponds to the 10–39 MeV range, the other is for the higher 40–70 MeV incident energies. Each set resulted in angular distribution fits which are in very good agreement with experimental data even in the large-angle scattering region, which is usually endowed by nonlocal effects. The fits were improved even further by expressing the imaginary volume and imaginary surface depths as linear functions of energy and the $$(N-Z)/A$$ asymmetry term. This indicates that there is still need for energy-dependent parameters even when nonlocality is explicitly included in the potential. We also used the model to predict elastic angular distributions for proton scattering off nuclei not included in the fitting procedure. The theoretical predictions showed very good agreement with experiment. As a further test of the nonlocal model, we calculated total reaction cross sections for proton scattering off light 1p-shell nuclei. Our predictions are in fair overall agreements with the experimental data