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.