Determining neutron capture cross sections via the surrogate reaction technique

Indirect methods play an important role in the determination of nuclear reaction cross sections that are hard to measure directly. In this paper we investigate the feasibility of using the so-called surrogate method to extract neutron capture cross sections for low-energy compound-nuclear reactions in spherical and near-spherical nuclei. We present the surrogate method and develop a statistical nuclear reaction simulation to explore different approaches to utilizing surrogate reaction data. We assess the success of each approach by comparing the extracted cross sections with a predetermined benchmark. In particular, we employ regional systematics of nuclear properties in the 34 <= Z <= 46 region to calculate (n,gamma) cross sections for a series of Zr isotopes and to simulate a surrogate experiment and the extraction of the desired cross section. We identify one particular approach that may provide very useful estimates of the cross section, and we discuss some of the limitations of the method. General recommendations for future (surrogate) experiments are also given.