Coulomb dissociation of light nuclei

We present an alternative theoretical formulation of the Coulomb dissociation process. We apply the formalism to the deuteron as an example of a weakly bound two-body composite nucleus with a charged core and a neutral valence particle and for which exclusive experimental data exist in an appropriate kinematical regime. The theoretical scheme assumes that the projectile excitation is predominantly to states with low internal energy and is expected to be applicable at incident projectile energies of tens of MeV per nucleon and above. A readily calculable expression for the quantum mechanical breakup transition amplitude is obtained without the use of the distorted-wave Born approximation weak channel coupling approximation or of additional approximations for finite-range effects. Calculations are presented, analyzed, and compared with high precision, kinematically complete, measurements of elastic deuteron dissociation into very forward scattering angles. The calculations and data support the importance of the Coulomb breakup mechanism under these kinematical conditions.