Breakup reactions of the halo nuclei 11Be and 8B

We calculate the nuclear induced breakup of 11Be and 8B using a more realistic treatment of the diffraction and stripping processes than in previous work. The breakup is treated in the eikonal approximation with a profile function calculated from a realistic optical potential at low energies and from free nucleon-nucleon cross sections at high energies. This treatment gives a good description of measured breakup cross sections, as well as the longitudinal momentum distribution of the corelike fragments, which is narrower than predicted in the transparent limit. The real part of the potential is found to be significant and enhances the diffractive breakup at low energies. copyright 1996 The American Physical Society