Rotational-vibrational description of nucleon scattering on actinide nuclei using a dispersive coupled-channel optical model

Tamura's coupling formalism has been extended to consider low-lying rotational bands built on vibrational (single-particle) band heads in well-deformed even-even (odd) actinides. These additional excitations are introduced as a perturbation to the underlying rigid rotor structure that is known to describe well the ground state rotational band of major actinides. Coupling matrix elements needed in extended Tamura's formalism are derived for both even-even and odd actinides. Employed dispersive optical model (DCCOMP) replaces the incident proton energy E_p (for proton induced reactions) by the equivalent Coulomb subtracted energy in all potential terms including both the imaginary and real potentials with the corresponding dispersive corrections. Therefore, the optical potential becomes fully symmetric for protons and neutrons. This potential is used to fit simultaneously all the available optical experimental databases (including neutron strength functions) for nucleon scattering on ²³⁸U and ²³²Th (even even) nuclei. Quasi-elastic (p,n) scattering data to the isobaric analogue states of the target nuclei are also used to constrain the isovector part of the optical potential. Derived Lane-consistent DCCOMP is based on coupling of almost all levels below 1 MeV of excitation energy. The ground state, octupole, beta, gamma and non-axial rotational bands are considered for even nuclei, and rotational bands built on single-particle levels – for odd nuclei. Application of derived potential to odd targets based on a new coupling scheme is foreseen.