Coulomb-nuclear interference in the breakup of $^{11}$Be

Abstract

Within a theory of breakup reactions formulated in the framework of the post form distorted wave Born approximation, we calculate contributions of the pure Coulomb and the pure nuclear breakup as well as those of their interference terms to a variety of cross sections in breakup reactions of the one-neutron halo nucleus $^{11}$Be on a number of target nuclei. In contrast to the assumption often made, the Coulomb-nuclear interference terms are found to be non-negligible in case of exclusive cross sections of the fragments emitted in this reaction on medium mass and heavy target nuclei. The consideration of the nuclear breakup leads to a better description of such data.