Scaling laws and higher-order effects in Coulomb excitation of neutron halo nuclei

Essential properties of halo nuclei can be described in terms of a few low-energy constants. For neutron halo nuclei, analytical results can be found for wave functions and electromagnetic transition matrix elements in simple but well-adapted models. These wave functions can be used to study nuclear reactions; an especially simple and instructive example is Coulomb excitation. A systematic expansion in terms of small parameters can be given. We present scaling laws for excitation amplitudes and cross-sections. The results can be used to analyze experiments like Be-11 Coulomb excitation. They also serve as benchmark tests for more involved reaction theories.