The eikonal model of reactions involving exotic nuclei; Roy Glauber's legacy in today's nuclear physics

Gives an interesting survey of the use of Roy Glauber's eikonal model for describing the scattering of halo nuclei and hence extracting some of their properties. Modern refinements to the approach that might have to be used at lower energies are also described. It is a fitting tribute to an important contributor to our field who died about a year ago.

In several places it seems that the wrong English word was chosen.

I enjoyed reading the paper and I have no hesitation in recommending its acceptance by the journal. Given the author’s expertise in the area, my comments are largely confined to important linguistic points.

The author has obtained permission from the APS to reproduce certain figures from Phys. Rev. However, my experience from writing review articles was that, if I were an author on a research paper, permission was automatic.

I was never optimistic about using the Glauber techniques at very low energies. where other non-eikonal mechanisms may play significant roles

1) In several places the author uses “efficient”. Perhaps he often means this rather than say “effective”. On the other hand he writes “Efficient campaigns of measurements have been organised to measure the momentum distribution along isotopic lines, as the one reported in Ref. [14].” In what sense is the campaign “efficient”? A better word here might be “Extensive”.

2) “unusual size is now understood as resulting from the lose binding of one or two nucleons observed”. Replace “lose” by “loose”.

3) “For instance 11Be, which is one of the best known one-neutron halo nucleus can be” It would be better if one replaced “nucleus” by “nuclei,” [Note also the comma.]

4) “done mostly through indirect techniques like reactions [3].” Replace “like” by “using” or “such as”, depending what the author wants to stress.

5) “In this case, the idea of the eikonal approximation is similar as in the case of a one-body” Replace “as” by “to that”

6) “Because the reactions described at the eikonal approximation” Replace “at” by “in”

7) “We observe that the former, which agrees”. One cannot use “former” when there are three or more possibilities. Perhaps this word could be replaced by “first of these”.

8) “Once folded with experimental resolution (solid line), the theoretical prediction perfectly matches the data [12].” Though the model works very well indeed, the agreement is not “perfect”. The reference to [12] at this point is also a bit misleading because the data are taken from [10].

9) “hence the dire need to include them properly” I don’t think that the author really means “dire”, which implies a situation that might even be hopeless. Personally I would have replaced “fire need” by “necessity” (but there are other solutions, such as replacing “dire” by “vital”).

10) “The excellent agreement with experiment observed on both the energy
(left panel of Fig. 6)”. The agreement is indeed “good” but not “excellent” because one can see by eye that the near-threshold peak is displaced.

11) “peeking at too forward an angle” The author probably means “peaking”.

12) “At least for Coulomb-dominated collisions is it thus” Invert the “is” and “it” so that it is not a question.

13) “are seen as pilling up into compact objects” I am not quite sure what the author means here. Possibly he wanted to write “piling up” but it is still not common usage.