17F breakup reactions: A touchstone for indirect measurements

Dissociation has become an essential tool in several domains of nuclear physics. It provides useful information about the structure of halo nuclei, and Coulomb breakup can be used as an indirect method to measure radiative-capture cross sections at stellar energies. Though simple it may seem, this indirect technique relies on peculiar assumptions. Recent theoretical analyses of the Coulomb breakup of 8B have shown that these assumptions are not all satisfied. Whereas many experimental investigations on such a phenomenon have been conducted on 8B, the case of 17F has been poorly addressed up to now. An exclusive study of 17F breakup reactions has thus been performed at the FRIBs facility of the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, Catania (Italy). The experimental setup and the detector systems allowed the measurement, event-by-event, of the X-Y coordinates of the interaction point on the target as well as the momenta and angles of all outgoing decay particles with a geometrical efficiency of 72% and a resolution of approximately 300 keV. The first results and preliminary model comparison are reported.