Two-step nuclear reactions: The Surrogate Method, the Trojan Horse Method and their common foundations

Abstract

In this Letter I argue that the Surrogate Method, used to extract the fast neutron capture cross section on actinide target nuclei, which has important practical application for the next generation of breeder reactors, and the Trojan Horse Method employed to extract reactions of importance to nuclear astrophysics, have a common foundation, the Inclusive Non-Elastic Breakup (INEB)Theory. Whereas the Surrogate Method relies on the premise that the extracted neutron cross section in a (d,p) reaction is predominantly a compound nucleus one, the Trojan Horse Method, assumes a predominantly direct process for the secondary reaction induced by the surrogate fragment. In general, both methods contain both direct and compound contributions, and I show how theses seemingly distinct methods are in fact the same but at different energies and different kinematic regions. The unifying theory is the rather well developed INEB theory.

arXiv comment3 pages. Accepted for publication in the European Physical Journal A (2017)

References in corpus (6)

• Reexamining closed-form formulae for inclusive breakup: Application to deuteron and ${}^6$Li induced reactions
• Theory of the Trojan-Horse Method
• Cross sections for neutron capture from surrogate measurements: An examination of Weisskopf-Ewing and ratio approximations
• Numerical assessment of post-prior equivalence for inclusive breakup reactions
• Study of the 238U(d,p) surrogate reaction via the simultaneous measurement of gamma-decay and fission probabilities
• Inclusive breakup of three-fragment weakly bound nuclei

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The total reaction cross section of heavy-ion reactions induced by stable and unstable exotic beams: The low-energy regime
• Assessing the foundation of the Trojan Horse Method
• Neutron capture cross sections of radioactive nuclei