Importance of Coulomb dissociation of the deuteron on nucleon production reactions

A narrow beam of high energy neutrons or protons can be produced if a target material is bombarded with energetic deuterons. The processes which lead to the formation of stripped particle beams in encounters of high energy deuterons with target nuclei are briefly reviewed. We show that elastic Coulomb dissociation of the deuteron may play a significant role in energetic and forward peaked neutron/proton production on heavy metal targets.