On the accuracy of calculating the exchange part of the real heavy ion potential

In the present work, we test the validity of replacing the non-diagonal density matrix appearing in the exchange part of the nucleus-nucleus optical potential by an approximation based on the density matrix expansion used frequently in the nuclear structure calculations. We have found that for the recently derived BDM3Y nucleon-nucleon force the DME may produce a maximum error more than 20% in the nucleus-nucleus potential.