Continuum effects in reactions involving weakly bound nuclei

Abstract In this contribution we investigate the role of the continuum spectrum in reactions of astrophysical interest. In particular, the influence of these coupling effects in the description of elastic and transfer reactions is discussed. We examine the validity of the Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWBA) as a tool to extract the astrophysical S 17 (0) factor from the transfer reaction 14 N( 7 Be, 8 B) 13 C. For this purpose, we present calculations for this reaction comparing the DWBA method with the CDCC-Born approximation, in which continuum effects are explicitly incorporated.