Self-consistent spectral framework for inclusive nonelastic breakup: The Trojan-horse method as its sub-Coulomb resonant limit

Abstract

At the keV-scale energies of stellar nucleosynthesis, the resonant charged-particle reactions addressed by the Trojan-horse method (THM) proceed through isolated near-threshold resonances, so the low-energy cross section and the resonance strength carry the same information. The standard THM working formula is used there as a fixed extraction prescription, without a controlled reduction from the inclusive nonelastic breakup parent that would identify what it sets aside. I derive the sub-Coulomb resonant THM extraction directly from the Ichimura-Austern-Vincent inclusive nonelastic breakup cross section. A diagonal isolated-pole spectral ansatz for the absorptive participant-target potential, with four explicit validity conditions, reduces the inclusive cross section in the isolated-resonance limit to a per-pole distorted-wave Born approximation cross section on the resonance state, retaining full distortions and the postform interaction and weighted by the channel branching ratio; this is the operational quantity for resonance-strength extraction. The same one-level total-width profile follows independently from the postform transfer amplitude through the exact final states, so the extraction is route independent; a three-layer width analysis fixes its absorptive strength as half the nonelastic decay width, resolving the width and sign ambiguities of the literature. The standard factorized THM formula then follows under three dynamical approximations, plane waves, on-shell binary amplitude, and remnant neglect, together with a zero-range simplification of the projectile vertex, making explicit what it sets aside: the partial-wave coherence and the postform remnant.

15 pages, 1 figure. Accepted version, matching Phys. Rev. C 114, 034606 (2026)