  The scattering of a weakly bound (halo) projectile nucleus by a heavy target
nucleus is investigated. A new approach, called the Uncorrelated Scattering
Approximation, is proposed. The main approximation involved is to neglect the
correlation between the fragments of the projectile in the region where the
interaction with the target is important. The formalism makes use of
hyper-spherical harmonics, Raynal-Revay coefficients and momentum-localized
wave functions to expand projectile channel wave functions in terms of products
of the channel wave function of the individual fragments. Within this approach,
the kinetic energy and angular momentum of each fragment is conserved during
the scattering process. The elastic, inelastic and break-up S-matrices are
obtained as an analytic combination involving the bound wave function of the
projectile and the product of the S-matrices of the fragments. The approach is
applied to describe the scattering of deuteron on $^{58}$Ni at several
energies. The results are compared with experimental data and
continuum-discretized coupled-channels calculations.
