NUCLEAR-CHARGE DENSITY DISTRIBUTIONS FROM ELASTIC ELECTRON-SCATTERINGDATA

The model independent procedure of extracting charge density distribut ions from elastic electron scattering data is investigated. The charge density distributions are expanded on an orthonormal basis and the pa rameters of the expansions are fixed by the comparison with the experi mental data. Two bases with different analytical properties (Fourier-B essel and Hermite) are used. This allows us to disentangle the uncerta inties coming from the choice of the expansion basis from those intrin sic to the extraction procedure. We design a set of tests to select th e number of the expansion coefficients adequate for a proper descripti on of the data. The procedure is applied to elastic data measured on C -12, Ca-40 and Pb-208 nuclei.