The continuum in reactions with light exotic nuclei

One of the most striking features of dripline nuclei is their very low binding energy. The proximity to threshold implies that many of the standard reactions should take into account the possibility of the nucleus breaking up into the continuum and rearranging itself within the continuum, throughout the reaction process. Whereas for stable nuclei often structure could be factorized out of the reaction model, it is clear that for exotic nuclei, the specific structure features cannot be desentangled. We review a variety of different cases where the coupling to the continuum and between continuum states was shown to be crucial for the understanding of the physical phenomena. Breakup reactions of 8B, for various energies and on a few targets, are discussed. The effect of the continuum on the elastic cross sections as well as transfer and fusion processes is also presented