  Nuclear surface provides useful information on nuclear radius, nuclear
structure as well as properties of nuclear matter. We discuss the relationship
between the nuclear surface diffuseness and elastic scattering differential
cross section at the first diffraction peak of high-energy nucleon-nucleus
scattering as an efficient tool in order to extract the nuclear surface
information from limited experimental data involving short-lived unstable
nuclei. The high-energy reaction is described by a reliable microscopic
reaction theory, the Glauber model. Extending the idea of the black sphere
model, we find one-to-one correspondence between the nuclear bulk structure
information and proton elastic scattering diffraction peak. This implies that
we can extract both the nuclear radius and diffuseness simultaneously, using
the position of the first diffraction peak and its magnitude of the elastic
scattering differential cross section. We confirm the reliability of this
approach by using realistic density distributions obtained by a mean-field
model.
