Dominance of Nuclear Processes in the Dissociation of 8B

We study the break-up of 8B in collisions with heavy-ions. The process is described in terms of inelastic excitations leading to states in the continuum. The effects of the nuclear and coulomb fields are included on the same footing in the microscopic construction of the transition matrix elements. The interplay between coulomb and nuclear excitation processes differs significantly from the situation encountered in reactions involving systems close to the stability line. In particular, nuclear excitation is found to remain predominant at energies well below the coulomb barrier,