Effects of vacuum polarization on sub-coulomb 12C-12C scattering (l)

Abstract In order to investigate the effect of vacuum polarization on the sub-Coulomb interaction between hadrons, the relative differential cross section for elastic 12 C- 12 C scattering at E lab = 4 MeV was measured with high precision at angles near 45°. Special care was taken to study various sources of systematic errors. The positions of the interference minima are determined to ±0.002°. The data are compared with theoretical calculations taking into account the contribution due to the Uehling potential and various other effects such as nuclear interaction, nuclear polarizability and electronic screening. The results of our experiment constitute a test of the vacuum polarization on the 7% level.