Higher-order effects in the two-body breakup of 17F Original Research Article

The two-body breakup View the MathML source on Ni and Pb targets at 10–40 MeV/u is calculated by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation numerically. Both Coulomb and the nuclear potentials are important in these reactions, but the Coulomb contribution cannot be calculated reliably in first-order perturbation theory. The most dramatic feature is a dynamic polarization effect, which reduces the Coulomb dissociation probability compared to first-order perturbation theory. Over most of the energy range, the correction is proportional to Z3, the cube of the target charge, and the relative importance is nearly inversely proportional to the beam energy. At the lowest energies in the range considered, higher-order effects (⩾Z3) become significant as well. At the impact parameters where nuclear induced breakup is dominant, the diffraction dissociation is reduced whereas stripping is enhanced compared to the eikonal approximation. Here too the deviations decrease inversely with beam energy over most of the range considered.