We present a semiclassical method to treat the proton breakup from a weakly bound state in an exotic nucleus. The Coulomb interactions among the proton, the core, and the target are treated to all orders, including the full-multipole expansion of the Coulomb potential. The nuclear proton-target interaction is also treated to all orders. The core-target interaction is included as an absorption. The method is semianalytical, thus allowing for a detailed understanding of the short-range and long-range effects of the interactions in the reaction dynamics. It explains also the origin of possible asymmetries in the core parallel momentum distributions when the full-multipole expansion of the Coulomb potential is used. Calculations are compared to results of other, fully numerical, methods and to experimental data to establish the accuracy and reliability of the method.

• Received 12 February 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.76.014607