The Trojan Horse Method: an Indirect Technique in Nuclear Astrophysics

The Trojan Horse (TH) method is a powerful indirect technique that provides information to determine astrophysical factors for rearrangement processes at astrophysically relevant energies. A short coming for understanding the reliability of the technique has been determining the importance of nuclear and Coulomb effects on the energy dependence of the yield. Using a simple model, we demonstrate that off-energy-shell and Coulomb effects in the entry channel and the final state nuclear interactions do not change the energy dependence of the astrophysical factor extracted from the TH reaction. Some examples are presented.