Critical comparison of folded potential and deformed potential models of heavy-ion inelastic scattering

Abstract We give a comparative review of the use of the deformed potential and folded potential models for the analysis of data from the inelastic scattering of heavy ions and alpha particles. Representative cases are studied. It is shown that use of the deformed potential can very significantly underestimate the corresponding nuclear transition rate by amounts that increase strongly as the multipolarity increases. Some criticism of the implicit folding procedure is also offered.