Background: Projectile breakup can make a large contribution to reactions induced by projectiles with mass numbers 2, 3, and 4, yet there is no global model for it and no clear agreement on the details of the reaction mechanism.Purpose: This project aims to develop a phenomenological model for light-projectile breakup that can guide the development of detailed theories and provide a useful tool for applied calculations.Method: An extensive database of double-differential cross sections for the breakup of deuterons, 3 He ions, and α particles was assembled from the literature and analyzed in a consistent way.Results: Global systematics for the centroid energies, peak widths, and angular distributions of the breakup peaks have been extracted from the data. The dominant mechanism appears to be absorptive breakup, where the unobserved projectile fragment fuses with the target nucleus during the initial interaction. The global target-mass-number and incident-energy dependences of the absorptive breakup cross section have also been determined, along with channel-specific normalization constants.
Conclusions:Results from the model generally agree with the original data after subtraction of a reasonable underlying continuum. Absorptive breakup can account for as much as 50 to 60% of the total reaction cross section.