  Motivated by the renewed interest in the surrogate nuclear reactions
approach, an indirect method for determining compound-nuclear reaction cross
sections, the prospects for determining (n, gamma) cross sections for deformed
rare-earth and actinide nuclei are investigated. A nuclear-reaction model is
employed to simulate physical quantities that are typically measured in
surrogate experiments and used to assess the validity of the Weisskopf-Ewing
and ratio approximations, which are typically employed in the analysis of
surrogate reactions. The expected accuracy of (n,gamma) cross sections
extracted from typical surrogate measurements is discussed and limitations of
the approximate methods are illustrated. Suggestions for moving beyond
presently-employed approximations are made.
