Elastic proton scattering off non-zero spin nuclei

Abstract: In recent years, we constructed a microscopic optical potential (OP) for elastic nucleon-nucleus ($NA$) scattering using modern approaches based on chiral theories for the nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interaction. The OP was derived at first order of the spectator expansion in Watson multiple scattering theory and its final expression was a folding integral between the $NN$ $t$ matrix and the nuclear density of the target. Two- and three-body forces are consistently included both in the target and in the projectile description. The purpose of this work is to apply our microscopic OP to nuclei characterized by a ground state of spin-parity quantum numbers $J^\pi \ne 0^+$. We extended our formalism to include the spin of the target nucleus. The full amplitudes of the $NN$ reaction matrix are retained in the calculations starting from two- and three-body chiral forces. We show a remarkable agreement with experimental data for the available observables and, simultaneously, provide reliable estimates for the theoretical uncertainties. This work paves the way toward a full microscopic approach to inelastic $NA$ scattering, showing that the derivation of optical potentials between states with $J^\pi \ne 0^+$ is completely under control.