Coulomb-corrected eikonal description of the breakup of halo nuclei

The eikonal description of breakup reactions diverges because of the Coulomb interaction between the projectile and the target. This divergence is due to the adiabatic, or sudden, approximation usually made, which is incompatible with the infinite range of the Coulomb interaction. A correction for this divergence is analyzed by comparison with the dynamical eikonal approximation, which is derived without the adiabatic approximation. The correction consists in replacing the first-order term of the eikonal Coulomb phase by the first-order of the perturbation theory. This allows taking into account both nuclear and Coulomb interactions on the same footing within the computationally efficient eikonal model. Excellent results are found for the dissociation of Be-11 on lead at 69 MeV/nucleon. This Coulomb-corrected eikonal approximation provides a competitive alternative to more elaborate reaction models for investigating breakup of three-body projectiles at intermediate and high energies.