Elastic Scattering of 96-Mev Protons

The elastic scattering of 96-Mev protons from C, Al, Cu, Ag, Ta, Pb, and Th has been investigated at laboratory angles between 3^∘{} and 60^∘{}. A range telescope with an over-all energy resolution of 2.8 Mev was used to obtain the energy distribution of scattered protons at each angle of observation. The energy distributions are analyzed to obtain values for (1) an "upper limit" to the elastic cross section which includes slightly inelastic events, and (2) an "extrapolated" elastic cross section in which inelastic events are subtracted by an extrapolation procedure. All targets show diffraction minima and Coulomb-nuclear interference effects. The depth of the diffraction minima in general increases with atomic number, except that Ta and Th have less pronounced minima than either Ag or Pb.