Nuclear rainbow of the symmetric nucleus-nucleus system: Interchange of the nearside and farside scattering

Abstract

Extensive elastic scattering data measured at energies around 10 to 20 MeV/nucleon for some identical systems, like 12C+12C and 16O+16O, exhibit the nuclear rainbow pattern of broad Airy oscillations of the cross section at medium and large angles. Due to the identity of the scattered projectile and recoiled target, the rainbow pattern at angles around and beyond $\theta_{\rm c.m.}\approx 90^\circ$ is strongly deteriorated by the boson exchange. The nuclear rainbow features in the identical-particles elastic scattering discussed so far are based on the nearside-farside (NF) decomposition of the scattering amplitude given by an optical model calculation neglecting the projectile-target exchange symmetry. Moreover, the NF decomposition method was developed in the 70s by Fuller for nonidentical systems only, and the details of how the exchange symmetry of an identical system affects the evolution of nuclear rainbow remain unexplored. Therefore, the Fuller method is generalized in this work for the elastic scattering of two identical (spin-zero) nuclei, with the projectile-target exchange symmetry taken explicitly into account. The results obtained for elastic 12C+12C and 16O+16O scattering at low energies show the exchange symmetry results in a symmetric interchange of the nearside and farside patterns at angles passing $\theta_{\rm c.m.}=90^\circ$, which requires a more subtle interpretation of nuclear rainbow. We also found that a similar NF interchange occurs in a nonidentical nucleus-nucleus system with the core-core symmetry, where the elastic cross section at backward angles is due mainly to the elastic transfer of cluster or nucleon between two identical cores. This interesting effect is illustrated in the elastic 16O+12C scattering at low energies where the elastic $\alpha$ transfer between two 12C cores has been proven to enhance the elastic cross section at backward angles.