  While it is well established that the ground state reorientation coupling can
have a significant influence on the elastic scattering of deformed nuclei, the
effect of such couplings on transfer channels has been much less well
investigated. In this letter we demonstrate that the 208Pb(7Li,6He)209Bi proton
stripping reaction at an incident energy of 52 MeV can be well described by the
inclusion of the 7Li ground state reorientation coupling within the coupled
channels Born approximation formalism. Full finite-range distorted wave Born
approximation calculations were previously found to be unable to describe these
data. Addition of coupling to the 0.478-MeV 1/2- excited state of 7Li, together
with the associated two-step transfer path, has little or no influence on the
shape of the angular distributions (except that for stripping leading to the
1.61-MeV 13/2+ level of 209Bi which is significantly improved) but does affect
appreciably the values of the 209Bi -> 208Pb + p spectroscopic factors.
Implications for experiments with weakly-bound light radioactive beams are
discussed.
