Motivated by the renewed interest in the surrogate nuclear reactions approach, an indirect method for determining compound-nuclear reaction cross sections, the prospects for determining ($n,\gamma$) cross sections for deformed rare-earth and actinide nuclei are investigated. A nuclear reaction model is employed to simulate physical quantities that are typically measured in surrogate experiments and used to assess the validity of the Weisskopf-Ewing and ratio approximations, which are typically employed in the analysis of surrogate reactions. The expected accuracy of ($n,\gamma$) cross sections extracted from typical surrogate measurements is discussed and limitations of the approximate methods are illustrated. Suggestions for moving beyond presently employed approximations are made.

• Received 14 December 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.81.024612