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Description
This work presents preliminary results from an experimental campaign conducted in October 2025 at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University. The experiment studied the inelastic scattering of high-energy protons (392 MeV) at very forward angles off $^{56}$Fe nuclei. The scattered protons were measured with the high-resolution magnetic spectrometer "Grand Raiden". Double-differential cross-sections for the (p,p') scattering process were obtained after correcting the ion-optical aberrations and subtracting the background. The equivalent photo-absorption cross-section and E1 strength function were deduced by the virtual photon method. The nuclear polarizability was calculated, and the exhaustion of the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn sum rule was verified. The preliminary results are compared with existing experimental data. These observables provide important constraints on nuclear response models, and are relevant for applications involving photonuclear reactions. They have direct applications to astrophysics, for instance, as nuclear physics inputs to models of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays propagation.
This work was partially supported by the Institute of Atomic Physics contract numbers ELI-RO/RDI/2024-002 (CIPHERS), ELI-RO/RDI/2024-007 (ELITE) the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation under research contract PN 23 21 01 06.