Systematic study on the role of various higher-order processes in the breakup of weakly-bound projectiles

The virtual photon theory (VPT), which is based on first-order Coulomb dissociation restricted to the electric dipole (E1), has been successfully used to explain the breakup data for several cases. Our aim is to study the role of various higher-order processes that are ignored in the VPT, such as the nuclear breakup, interference between nuclear and Coulomb amplitudes, and multistep breakup processes mainly due to strong continuum-continuum couplings in the breakup of two-body projectiles on a heavy target at both intermediate and higher incident energies. For the purpose of numerical calculations, we employed an eikonal version of a three-body continuum-discretized coupled-channels (CDCC) reaction model. Our results for the breakup of Be-11 and F-17 on a Pb-208 target at 100, 250, and 520MeVA(-1) show the importance of the nuclear breakup contribution and its significant role in the multistep processes. The multistep effect on Coulomb breakup for a core-neutron projectile was found to be negligible, whereas it was important for a core-proton projectile. A Coulomb-nuclear interference (CNI) effect was also found to be non-negligible. Quantitatively, the multistep effects due to the nuclear breakup were found to depend on the incident energy through the energy dependence of the core-target and nucleon-target nuclear potentials. The nuclear breakup component, the CNI effect, and the multistep breakup processes are all found to be non-negligible; hence, the assumptions adopted in the VPT for the accurate description of breakup cross-sections are not valid

Automated summary

The study indicates that the nuclear breakup, interference between nuclear and Coulomb amplitudes, and multistep breakup processes are all significant factors that cannot be ignored. The assumptions made in the VPT are found to be invalid for accurately describing breakup cross-sections.