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Coulomb breakup of a projectile in the Coulomb field of a fully stripped heavy nucleus is at present one of the most popular experimental methods to obtain information on reactions of interest in nuclear astrophysics. Its theoretical interpretation presents, however, considerable difficulties, due to the three-body nature and the infinite range of the Coulomb forces involved. Among the uncertainties affecting present analyses, the possible modification of the dissociation cross section by three-body Coulomb final-state interactions plays a major role. Various methods which have been proposed to deal with it are briefly reviewed. However, none of them is based on a consistent and mathematically satisfactory quantum mechanical treatment, with the exception of the one proposed recently. The latter, being based on the prior form of the dissociation amplitude, makes use of a genuine three-charged particle wave function for the final state which is an exact solution of the three-body Schr\"odinger equation, albeit only asymptotically, i.e. for large distances. Nevertheless, interesting conclusion can be drawn concerning the influence of three-body Coulomb final-state interactions on quantities of astrophysical interest., Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures; requires ws-mpla.cls style file

We present the results of a calculation of differential cross sections and polarization observables for proton-deuteron elastic scattering, for proton laboratory energies from 2.5 to 22.5 MeV. The Paris potential parametrisation of the nuclear force is used. As solution method for the charged-composite particle equations the 'screening and renormalisation approach' is adopted which allows to correctly take into account the Coulomb repulsion between the two protons. Comparison is made with the precise experimental data of Sagara et al. [Phys. Rev. C 50, 576 (1994)] and of Sperison et al. [Nucl. Phys. A422, 81 (1984)]., Comment: 24 pages, 8 eps figures, uses REVTeX

We report on a systematic treatment of Coulomb corrections for 3- and n-particle (Bose-Einstein) correlations, leading to a removal of a 100 % systematic error from earlier Coulomb corrections of 5-particle Bose-Einstein correlations in heavy ion collisions. These results are generalized to include strong final state interactions and core-halo effects., Comment: 8 pages, talk given by B. Lorstad at the ISMD 2000, Tihany, Hungary (World Scientific, Singapore in press)

It has been a long-standing question whether momentum space integral equations of the Faddeev type are applicable to reactions of three charged particles, in particular above the three-body threshold. For, the presence of long-range Coulomb forces has been thought to give rise to such severe singularities in their kernels that the latter may lack the compactness property known to exist in the case of purely short-range interactions. Employing the rigorously equivalent formulation in terms of an effective-two-body theory we have proved in a preceding paper [Phys. Rev. C {\bf 61}, 064006 (2000)] that, for all energies, the nondiagonal kernels occurring in the integral equations which determine the transition amplitudes for all binary collision processes, possess on and off the energy shell only integrable singularities, provided all three particles have charges of the same sign, i.e., all Coulomb interactions are repulsive. In the present paper we prove that, for particles with charges of equal sign, the diagonal kernels, in contrast, possess one, but only one, nonintegrable singularity. The latter can, however, be isolated explicitly and dealt with in a well-defined manner. Taken together these results imply that modified integral equations can be formulated, with kernels that become compact after a few iterations. This concludes the proof that standard solution methods can be used for the calculation of all binary (i.e., (in-)elastic and rearrangement) amplitudes by means of momentum space integral equations of the effective-two-body type., Comment: 36 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. C

The effect of multi-particle Coulomb final state interactions on higher-order intensity correlations is determined in general, based on a scattering wave function which is solution of the n-body Coulomb Schr\"odinger equation in (a large part of) the asymptotic region of n-body configuration space. In particular, we study Coulomb effects on the n-particle Bose-Einstein correlation functions of similarly charged particles and remove a systematic error as big as 100% from higher-order multi-particle Bose-Einstein correlation functions., Comment: 17 pages, 4 eps figures included

Starting from an asymptotically correct three-body Coulomb wave-function, we determine the effect of Coulomb final state interaction on the three-particle Bose-Einstein correlation function of similarly charged particles. We numerically estimate that the Riverside approximation is not precise enough to determine the three-body Coulomb correction factor in the correlation function, if the characteristic HBT radius parameter is 5 - 10 fm, which is the range of interest in high-energy heavy ion physics., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

Recent advances in the treatment of scattering of charged composite particles are reviewed. In a first part I report on developments of the theory. Specifically I describe the recent completion of the derivation of the co-ordinate space asymptotic behaviour of the wave function for three charged particles in the continuum. This knowledge is increasingly being made use of in attempts to `derive' three-Coulomb particle wave functions to be used in all of configuration space which are solutions of the Schroedinger equation, though not everywhere but at least in one or preferably all of the asymptotic regions. Their practical application in approximate calculations of ionisation and breakup processes is pointed out. The asymptotic three-charged particle wave functions find further use in investigations of asymptotic and analytic properties of matrix elements of the three-body Coulomb resolvent. An important example is the nonperturbative derivation, valid for all energies, of the large-distance behaviour of the optical potential. In the second part I describe renewed attempts to establish the few-body approach as a valuable tool for calculating (energetic) atomic collision processes. At the end I briefly touch upon the recent successful above-breakup-threshold calculation of proton-deuteron elastic scattering for a realistic potential., Comment: Invited talk at 16th European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Autrans, June 1-6, 1998, LaTeX, 10 pages, requires fbssuppl.sty

The asymptotic behavior of the optical potential, describing elastic scattering of a charged particle $\alpha$ off a bound state of two charged, or one charged and one neutral, particles at small momentum transfer $\Delta_{\alpha}$ or equivalently at large intercluster distance $\rho_{\alpha}$, is investigated within the framework of the exact three-body theory. For the three-charged-particle Green function that occurs in the exact expression for the optical potential, a recently derived expression, which is appropriate for the asymptotic region under consideration, is used. We find that for arbitrary values of the energy parameter the non-static part of the optical potential behaves for $\Delta_{\alpha} \rightarrow 0$ as $C_{1}\Delta_{\alpha} + o\,(\Delta_{\alpha})$. From this we derive for the Fourier transform of its on-shell restriction for $\rho_{\alpha} \rightarrow \infty$ the behavior $-a/2\rho_{\alpha}^4 + o\,(1/\rho_{\alpha}^4)$, i.e., dipole or quadrupole terms do not occur in the coordinate-space asymptotics. This result corroborates the standard one, which is obtained by perturbative methods. The general, energy-dependent expression for the dynamic polarisability $C_{1}$ is derived; on the energy shell it reduces to the conventional polarisability $a$ which is independent of the energy. We emphasize that the present derivation is {\em non-perturbative}, i.e., it does not make use of adiabatic or similar approximations, and is valid for energies {\em below as well as above the three-body dissociation threshold}., Comment: 35 pages, no figures, revtex

The driving terms in three-body theories of elastic and inelastic scattering of a charged particle off a bound state of two other charged particles contain the fully off-shell two-body Coulomb T-matrix describing the intermediate-state Coulomb scattering of the projectile with each of the charged target particles. Up to now the latter is usually replaced by the Coulomb potential, either when using the multiple-scattering approach or when solving three-body integral equations. General properties of the exact and the approximate on-shell driving terms are discussed, and the accuracy of this approximation is investigated numerically, both for atomic and nuclear processes including bound-state excitation, for energies below and above the corresponding three-body dissociation threshold, over the whole range of scattering angles., Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, figures can be obtained upon request from the Authors, revtex