EFFECTIVE NUCLEON NUMBER IN HIGH-ENERGY REACTIONS

Certain high-energy reactions have recently been analysed using impulse approximation and closure. This leads to an expression for the cross-section in which the leading term has the form of the product of the appropriate free two-body cross-section and a number N(A) which may be regarded as the effective number of nucleons participating in the reaction. Calculations are carried out in order to study the sensitivity of N(A) to uncertainties in the parameters of the two-body scattering amplitude and in the parameters of the nuclear-density distribution. A discussion is given of the validity of the basic assumptions on which this formalism is based. © 1969, Società Italiana di Fisica. All rights reserved.