Radiative capture reactions via indirect methods

Abstract

In this paper we address the indirect method, which can provide a powerful technique to obtain information about radiative capture reactions at astrophysically relevant energies. The idea of the indirect method is to use the indirect reaction $A(a, s\,\gamma)F$ to obtain information about the radiative capture reaction $A(x,\,\gamma)F$, where $a=(s\,x)$ and $F=(x\,A)$. The main advantage of using the indirect reactions is the absence of the penetrability factor in the channel $x+A$, which suppresses the low-energy cross sections of the $A(x,\,\gamma)F$ reactions and does not allow to measure these reactions at astrophysical energies. A general formalism to treat indirect resonant radiative capture reactions is developed when only a few intermediate states do contribute and statistical approach cannot be applied. Angular dependence of the triple differential cross section at fixed scattering angle of the spectator $s$ is the angular $\gamma-s$ correlation function. Using indirect resonant radiative capture reactions one can obtain the information about important astrophysical resonant radiative capture reactions, like $(p,\,\gamma), \,\,(\alpha,\,\gamma)$ and $(n,\,\gamma)$ on stable and unstable isotopes. The indirect technique makes accessible low-lying resonances, which are close to the threshold, and even subthreshold bound states located at negative energies. In this paper, after developing the general formalism, we demonstrated the application of the indirect reaction ${}^{12}{\rm C}({}^{6}{\rm Li},d\,\gamma){}^{16}{\rm O}$ proceeding through $1^{-}$ and $2^{+}$ subthreshold bound states and resonances to obtain the information about the ${}^{12}{\rm C}(\alpha,\,\gamma){}^{16}{\rm O}$ radiative capture at astrophysically most effective energy $0.3$ MeV what is impossible using standard direct measurements.