Breakup of ⁷ Li in the field of ^118,120 Sn nuclei and its effect on the elastic scattering channel*

Abstract The breakup of weakly-bound projectiles has been shown to significantly influence scattering processes, including elastic scattering. In this context, we revisit the angular distributions (ADs) for the elastic scattering of 7 Li from 118 Sn and 120 Sn targets. The study analyzes 7 Li + 118 Sn ADs over the energy range of 18.15–48 MeV and 7 Li + 120 Sn ADs from 20 to 44 MeV, utilizing various nuclear interaction models, including the São Paulo potential, CDM3Y6 potential (with and without the rearrangement term), and cluster folding model. The results indicate that the real component of the folded potentials must be scaled down by 40–65% to achieve an accurate fit to the experimental ADs, underscoring the prominent role of 7 Li breakup effects. Interestingly, the conventional threshold anomaly observed in reactions involving tightly bound nuclei is not present. Further analysis using the continuum discretized coupled channels (CDCC) approach provides excellent agreement with the data, reinforcing these findings.