On the “hindrance” of 3− excitations induced by nuclear scattering

It has been reported that the excitation of low-lying 3− states in nuclei by hadronic probes indicate much weaker transition strengths than are implied by the results of electromagnetic measurements. We demonstrate that this is a consequence of using the deformed optical potential model to analyze the hadronic scattering. The apparent hindrance disappears when a folding model is used. The discrepancy between the results of using the two models increases dramatically as the multipolarity of the transition increases, and we recommend the folding approach.