Coulomb dissociation of 8B and the low-energy cross section of the 7Be(p,gamma)8B solar fusion reaction.

An exclusive measurement of the Coulomb breakup of 8 B into 7 Be + p at 254A MeV allowed the study of the angular correlations of the breakup particles. These correlations demonstrate clearly that El multipolarity dominates and that E2 multipolarity can be neglected. By using a simple single-particle model for 8 B and treating the breakup in first-order perturbation theory, we extract a zero-energy S factor of S 1 7 (0) = 18.6 ′ 1.2 ′ 1.0 eV b, where the first error is experimental and the second one reflects the theoretical uncertainty in the extrapolation.