Determination of the S17 and S18 astrophysical factors from the breakup of 8B and 9C at intermediate energies Original Research Article

We show that asymptotic normalization coefficients can be extracted from one nucleon breakup reactions of loosely bound nuclei at 30–300 MeV/u. In particular, the breakup of 8B and 9C is described in terms of an extended Glauber model. The 8B ANC extracted from existing breakup data at several energies and on different targets, Ctot2 = 0.450 ± 0.039 fm−1, leads to the astrophysical factor S17(0) = 17.4 ± 1.5 eV·b for the key reaction for solar neutrino production, 7Be(p, γ)8B. We also find S18(0) = 46 ± 6 eV·b from the breakup of 9C at 285 MeV/u. Glauber model calculations in the eikonal approximation and in the optical limit using different effective interactions give consistent results. The procedure described provides an indirect method to determine reaction rates of astrophysical interest with beams of loosely bound radioactive nuclei.