On the eikonal approach to nuclear diffraction dissociation

Abstract

The study of nuclear breakup of halo and weakly bound particles has been one of the key ingredients in the understanding of exotic nuclei during the last thirty years. One of the most used methods to analyse data, in particular absolute breakup cross sections, has been the eikonal approximation. Here we revise critically the formalisms used for calculating the diffraction dissociation part of nuclear breakup and show that there is a formula that can be applied to breakup on any target, while a most commonly used formula must be restricted to light targets as it contains also the effect of Coulomb breakup calculated to first order in the sudden approximation which is well known for not being accurate.