Institut de recherche sur les lois fondamentales de l'Univers

The optical model potential is one of the primary tools for understanding nuclear reaction mechanisms and structure within the nucleus. Although there is consensus on its formal structure, its detailed microscopic implementation is still a challenging problem. Current state-of-the-art realizations of the optical potential have followed alternative representations with different emphasis: the 'g-folding' approach, where a local effective interaction is used in conjunction with a detailed treatment of the target ground state; and the 'full-folding' approach, where the emphasis is placed on a detailed treatment of the genuine off-shell effective interaction with its intrinsic non localities. In this talk we discuss some general aspects of the full-folding model, contrast it with r-space approaches and present its level of consistency in elastic and quasi-elastic nucleon scattering at energies between 10 MeV and 1 GeV. We shall also discuss recent findings indicating that the intrinsic medium effects are located mainly in the nuclear surface, a relevant fact in the study of nuclear phenomena with radioactive beams.