Eikonal approximation in heavy-ion fragmentation reactions - art. no. 014608

Projectile fragmentation reactions are well suited to structure studies of weakly hound nuclei, hut an accurate reaction theory is necessary to extrac t quantitative spectroscopic properties. We examine here the accuracy of th e commonly used eikonal approximation for the nuclear-induced breakup of ha lo nuclei. Comparing to numerical solutions of the full time-dependent Schr odinger equation, we find that the eikonal remains fairly accurate for calc ulating breakup probabilities of halo nuclei even down to 20 MeV/nucleon, r eproducing relative spectroscopic strengths to within a few percent. Absolu te reaction probabilities tend to be underpredicted by the eikonal, which w ould make extracted spectroscopic strengths somewhat too high. We discuss o ther features that are seen in the full calculation but are missing in the eikonal approximation such as the "towing" mode.