RPA correction to the optical potential

In studies of nucleon elastic scattering, a correction to the microscopic optical potential built from Melbourne g-matrix was found to be necessary at low nucleon incident energy [1,2]. Indeed, at energies lower than 60 MeV, the absorption generated from Melbourne g-matrix is too weak within 25%. Coupling to collective excited states of the target nucleus are not included in the g-matrix and could explain the missing absorption. We propose to calculate this correction to the optical potential using the Gogny D1S effective nucleon-nucleon interaction in the coupling to excited states of the target. We use the Random Phase Approximation (RPA) description of the excited states of the target with the same interaction.