  Neutron-induced reaction cross sections of short-lived nuclei are imperative
to understand the origin of heavy elements in stellar nucleosynthesis and for
societal applications, but their measurement is extremely complicated due to
the radioactivity of the targets involved. One way of overcoming this issue is
to combine surrogate reactions with the unique possibilities offered by
heavy-ion storage rings. In this work, we describe the first surrogate-reaction
experiment in inverse kinematics, which we successfully conducted at the
Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) of the GSI/FAIR facility, using the 208Pb(p,p')
reaction as a surrogate for neutron capture on 207Pb. Thanks to the outstanding
detection efficiencies possible at the ESR, we were able to measure for the
first time the neutron-emission probability as a function of the excitation
energy of 208Pb. We have used this probability to select different descriptions
of the gamma-ray strength function and nuclear level density, and provide
reliable results for the neutron-induced radiative capture cross section of
207Pb at energies for which no experimental data exist.
