Theory developements for obtaining neutron capture information from surrogate reactions

Neutron capture cross sections play an important role in stellar nucleosynthesis and thus are critical to our understanding of the formation of neutron-rich nuclei heavier than iron. However, the direct measurements of the reaction cross sections needed for such nuclear astrophysics simulations are often difficult - especially when the nuclei of interest are unstable. The surrogate reaction method is an approach that uses indirect reaction measurements and nuclear reaction theory to infer the capture cross sections [1,2]. In this talk, I will focus on theory developments for direct proton inelastic scattering as the surrogate mechanism to use integrated structure and reaction theory [3] in order to improve decay modeling in the Hauser Feshbach formalism. I will share my thoughts on the limitations of the current framework and highlight the scope for future improvements.