Verification of the surrogate ratio method

Effects of difference in the spin and parity distributions for the surrogate and neutron-induced reactions are investigated. Without assuming specific (schematic) spin-parity distributions, it was found that the surrogate ratio method can be employed to determine neutron fission and capture cross sections if (1) weak Weisskopf-Ewing condition (defined in this paper) is satisfied, (2) there exist two surrogate reactions whose spin-parity distributions of the decaying nuclei are almost equivalent, and (3) difference of the representative spin values between the neutron-induced and surrogate reactions is no much larger than 10. If these conditions are satisfied, we need not know the spin-parity distributions populated by the surrogate method. Instead, we should just select a pair of surrogate reactions which will populate the similar spin-parity distributions, using targets having similar structure and reactions having the similar reaction mechanisms. Achievable accuracy is estimated to be around $5%$ and $10%$ for fission and capture channels, respectively, for nuclei of the Uranium region. The surrogate absolute method may be applicable to determination of fission cross sections with a caution. However, there will be little hope to apply this method for capture cross section measurements unless the spin-parity distributions in the neutron-induced and surrogate reactions are fairly close to each other (which is implausible) or the difference can be corrected theoretically. The surrogate ratio method was shown also to be a robust method in the presence of breakup reactions without assuming specific breakup reaction mechanisms.