Precision data have been obtained for the elastic scattering of ${}^{17}\mathrm{F}$ on ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ and ${}^{14}\mathrm{N}$ at 10 MeV/nucleon to clarify the reaction mechanism for loosely bound nuclei at low energies and to assess the validity of a double-folding procedure to predict optical model potentials for use in indirect methods for nuclear astrophysics. The double-folding procedure incorporates density and energy-dependent effective nucleon-nucleon interactions with realistic densities consistent with experimentally determined asymptotic normalization coefficients. The derived potentials provide an excellent description of the data and point to a complete dominance of absorption at the barrier. A semiclassical analysis in terms of multireflection barrier–internal barrier series expansion of the scattering amplitude shows that only the barrier component survives in the scattering process, pointing to the peripheral character of the reactions.

• Received 19 May 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.72.034606