Neutron skins of $^{208}$Pb and $^{48}$Ca from pionic probes

Abstract

The neutron skin of $^{208}$Pb has received considerable attention in recent years. A variety of strongly-interacting probes depict a rather consistent picture but pionic probes have not been referred to in this context. We present here neutron-skin values from pionic atoms and from total reaction cross sections of $\pi ^+$ between 0.7 and 2 GeV/c which fit well into the picture. In addition we show that a neutron skin for $^{48}$Ca can be obtained from existing data on pionic atoms and the result agrees with pion scattering experiments and with the scattering of $\alpha $ particles.