A deformed global spherical optical potential to describe proton scattering off statically deformed heavy nuclei

We examine the applicability of the adiabatic approximation in the case of proton scattering off statically deformed actinide and rare-earth nuclei. This is achieved by deforming a global spherical potential to allow coupling of the elastic channel to inelastic rotational excitation states. Only the radius of volume term of the spherical potential is deformed. The rest of the potential parameters are used unaltered. The model reproduced the scattering observables well. The results are congruent to those of a global model in the literature that determines the potential parameters by fitting the experimental data within a channel coupling formalism. A necessary requirement for the adiabatic approximation to hold is that the speed of the proton should be much larger than the angular speed of the deformed target nucleus. The fact that our calculated angular distributions and total cross sections agree well with experiment indicates that this condition is still valid despite the possibility of the proton being decelerated by the coulomb force as it approaches the deformed nucleus.