Equation of State for Cold Nuclear Matter from Refractive<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mprescripts/><mml:mrow/><mml:mrow><mml:mn>16</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow/><mml:mrow/></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:mrow></mml:math>+<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mprescripts/><mml:mrow/><mml:mrow><mml:mn>16</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow/><mml:mrow/></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:mrow></mml:math>Elastic Scattering

The nuclear density overlap, which occurs during refractive heavy-ion scattering, opens an alternative approach to study the equation of state (EOS) for cold nuclear matter. For this purpose elastic $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ + $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ scattering at incident enegies of 145, 250, 350, and 480 MeV has been measured very accurately, up to large angles. A systematic folding analysis of these data has been performed using an effective density dependent interaction based on the $G$-matrix elements of the Paris nucleon-nucleon potential. We find, with the observed refractive scattering patterns, that a soft EOS (with the nuclear incompressibility $K$ around 200 MeV) is the most realistic one.