Coulomb breakup of a projectile in the Coulomb field of a fully stripped heavy nucleus is at present one of the most popular experimental methods to obtain information on reactions of interest in nuclear astrophysics. Its theoretical interpretation presents, however, considerable difficulties, due to the three-body nature and the infinite range of the Coulomb forces involved. Among the uncertainties affecting present analyses, the possible modification of the dissociation cross-section by three-body Coulomb final-state interactions plays a major role. Various methods which have been proposed to deal with it are briefly reviewed. However, none of them is based on a consistent and mathematically satisfactory quantum mechanical treatment, with the exception of the one proposed recently. The latter, being based on the prior form of the dissociation amplitude, makes use of a genuine three-charged particle wave function for the final state which is an exact solution of the three-body Schrödinger equation, albeit only asymptotically, i.e. for large distances. Nevertheless, interesting conclusion can be drawn concerning the influence of three-body Coulomb final-state interactions on quantities of astrophysical interest.
Coulomb breakup of 17 Ne from the view point of nuclear astrophysics