Elastic Scattering as a Test of Density Distributions in [sup 6]He and [sup 8]He.

Taking elastic scattering of [sup 6,8]He on protons as an example, it is shown that the differences between density distributions coming from different models can be evaluated when scattering data of the nuclei involved are available for comparison. Microscopic elasticscattering angular distributions have been calculated for incident energies <100A MeV by using the Tanihata and COSMA models for the density distributions of He nuclei, the M3Y-Paris effective NN interaction, and the Bray et al. imaginary part of the optical potential. The present microscopic angular distributions based on the Tanihata densities are in good agreement with the available experimental data and also similar to results of other theoretical calculations, showing the sensitivity of scattering to the density distributions of these helium isotopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]