Phenomenological model for elastic and inelastic high energy hadron-nuclear scattering with applications to pi-mesons and k-mesons

The purpose of the research presented in this thesis is to advance our understanding of nuclear structure and high energy hadron-nuclear interactions during the process of collision. There are various alternative methods of achieving this goal. However, we have chosen to analyze the experimental data on high energy meson nuclear scattering obtained at the Los Alamos and Brookhaven National Laboratories. For this purpose we have developed an extended version of a Phenomenological Model within the framework of partial wave expansions in the adiabatic approximation to calculate the elastic and inelastic scattering of high energy nucleons, composite systems of nucleons, and mesons from nuclei.; In the present formulation we utilize a consistent approximation procedure to obtain analytic closed form expressions for the elastic and inelastic scattering differential cross sections. The parameters entering into our description of the elastic scattering are an effective nuclear radius, effective surface thickness, and a parameter that is associated with the real part of the nuclear phase shifts. In order to describe the inelastic scattering we require an additional restoring force associated with the excited state of the nucleus under study. Both vibrational and rotational nuclear collective states are considered in the present investigation.; The above formalism has been applied to an analysis of elastic and inelastic scattering of (1) charged pions at 180MeV and 292.5MeV from {dollar}sp{lcub}40{rcub}{dollar}Ca at LAMPF and (2) charged pions and kaons from {dollar}sp{lcub}40{rcub}{dollar}Ca and {dollar}sp{lcub}12{rcub}{dollar}C at 800MeV/c at BNL. The quality of agreement between the experimental and theoretical differential cross sections is found to be very satisfactory in most cases examined. In conclusion we believe that the present investigation has increased our understanding of many of the important features of high energy meson-nucleus scattering data. Further, it has increased our understanding of the geometrical structure of the target nuclei which in turn determines uniquely the distribution of the nuclear matter density inside the nucleus.