Ashley Pitt
Postgraduate Research Student
Academic and research departments
Theoretical Nuclear Physics Group, School of Mathematics and Physics.About
My research project
Advancing inter-nuclear interactions for application to nuclear reactionsMy project aims to improve the current method that is used to calculate the microscopic optical potential for nucleon-nucleon elastic scattering. The optical potential is an interaction potential between a projectile and target in a scattering process, the name derives from optics where one can have a complex refractive index when dealing with the absorption of light in a material. Similarly, the optical potential in nuclear physics is a complex potential and possesses both a real and imaginary part. The real part of the potential deals with the scattering process and the complex part deals with the effects of non-elastic reactions.
Supervisors
My project aims to improve the current method that is used to calculate the microscopic optical potential for nucleon-nucleon elastic scattering. The optical potential is an interaction potential between a projectile and target in a scattering process, the name derives from optics where one can have a complex refractive index when dealing with the absorption of light in a material. Similarly, the optical potential in nuclear physics is a complex potential and possesses both a real and imaginary part. The real part of the potential deals with the scattering process and the complex part deals with the effects of non-elastic reactions.