Abstract
A method is presented to calculate the exact HI Coulomb potential between spherical and deformed nuclei in the framework of the double folding model. We used realistic density distributions taking the deformations of the target into account. We have compared between our calculations and one of the more recent analytical expressions based on assuming sharp surface of the interacting nuclei. We have found that the finite surface diffuseness affects strongly the HI Coulomb interaction in the inner region and has a smaller effect in the tail region. Moreover, neglecting non-linear higher order terms in the analytical expressions produces errors in the outer region of the Coulomb interaction. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.