Determining astrophysical three-body radiative capture reaction rates from inclusive Coulomb break-up measurements

A relationship between the Coulomb inclusive break-up probability and the radiative capture reaction rate for weakly bound three-body systems is established. This direct link provides a robust procedure to estimate the reaction rate for nuclei of astrophysical interest by measuring inclusive break-up processes at different energies and angles. This might be an advantageous alternative to the determination of reaction rates from the measurement of B(E1) distributions through exclusive Coulomb break-up experiments. In addition, it provides a reference to assess the validity of different theoretical approaches that have been used to calculate reaction rates. The procedure is applied to Li11 (Li9+n+n) and He6 (He4+n+n) three-body systems for which some data exist.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) under Projects No. FIS2011-28738-c02-01, No. FIS2013-41994-P, No. FPA2013-47327- C2-1-R, No. FIS2014-53448-c2-1-P, and FIS2014-51941-P and by Junta de Andalucía under Group No. FQM-160 and Project No. P11-FQM-7632. J. Casal acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte, FPU Research Grant No. AP2010-3124. M. Rodríguez-Gallardo acknowledges postdoctoral support from the Universidad de Sevilla under the V Plan Propio de Investigacion, Contract No. USE-11206-M.Peer Reviewe