Recently, a new approach for solving the three-body problem for (d,p) reactions in the Coulomb-distorted basis in momentum space was proposed. Important input quantities for such calculations are the scattering matrix elements for proton- and neutron-nucleus scattering. We present a generalization of the Ernst-Shakin-Thaler scheme in which a momentum space separable representation of proton-nucleus scattering matrix elements can be calculated in the Coulomb basis. The viability of this method is demonstrated by comparing S-matrix elements obtained for p$+^{48}$Ca and p$+^{208}$Pb for a phenomenological optical potential with corresponding coordinate space calculations.

5 pages, 3 figures