Measurement and microscopic analysis of the ¹¹B(p⃗,p⃗) reaction at E_p=150MeV. II. Depolarization in elastic scattering from odd-A nuclei

The polarization-transfer coefficient D_nn^′ in the elastic scattering of 150-MeV protons from ¹¹B has been measured in the angular range 5°<θ_c.m.<31°. Significant deviations of D_nn^′ from unity are observed starting around a center-of-mass scattering angle of 23°. The observed angular variation of D_nn^′ is analyzed using phenomenological and microscopically generated optical-model potentials to describe the monopole attributes of elastic scattering and to generate the distorted waves used in a distorted-wave approximation evaluation of nonzero multipole contributions to the elastic scattering process. The same approach is used to analyze datasets of D_nn^′ in elastic scattering from ¹³C and off ¹⁵N, which are available in the literature. The agreement of the fully microscopic analysis with the data is comparable or, in the case of ¹¹B, slightly better than what is achieved with conventional phenomenological optical-model calculations.