Study of nuclear matter density distributions using hadronic probes

We briefly review our formula for a proton-nucleus total reaction cross section, σR, constructed in the black-sphere approximation of nuclei, in which a nucleus is viewed as a 'black' sphere of radius 'a'. Some years ago, using the Glauber model, one of the authors (A.K.) and his collaborators performed numerical simulations to examine the possibility to probe the nuclear matter density distributions of neutron-rich unstable nuclei from proton elastic scatterings 'model-independently'. The present study is another attempt to seek a 'model-independent' framework for systematically analyzing scattering data for studying the matter density distributions of atomic nuclei.