Spin-dependent polarization potentials in the sub-Coulomb range

The spin-dependent polarization potentials, which effectively describe the coupling to the excited states in the Coulomb scattering of heavy ions, are discussed. Two limiting cases are considered; the polarization potential for low-lying and for high-lying states. The local equivalent polarization potentials are constructed - in principle for all tensor ranks. A semiclassical analysis is presented and applied to recent data of the scattering of aligned 23Na on 208Pb and 120Sn. (orig.)