The Trojan Horse Method (THM) represents the indirect way to measure reactions between charged particles at astrophysical energies. This is done by measuring the quasi free cross section of a suitable three body process. The basic features of the THM will be presented together with some applications to demonstrate its practical use.

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Deuteron induced quasifree scattering and reactions have been extensively investigated in the past few decades as well as 6 Li, 3 H, 3 He, and 9 Be induced reactions. This was done not only for the investigation of nuclear structure and reaction mechanisms but also for important astrophysical applications (Trojan horse method). In particular the widths of the spectator momentum distributions in several nuclei, which have been used as Trojan horses, have been obtained as a function of the transferred momentum. Applications of Trojan horse method will also be discussed because the momentum distribution of the spectator particle inside the nucleus is a important input for this method. This gives hints on distortion effects at low energies important for nuclear astrophysics.

The Trojan Horse method is a powerful indirect technique that provides information to determine astrophysical factors for binary rearrangement processes x + A → b + B at astrophysically relevant energies by measuring the cross section for the Trojan Horse reaction a + A → y + b + B in quasi-free kinematics. We present the theory of the Trojan Horse method for resonant binary subreactions based on the half-off-energy-shell R matrix approach which takes into account the off-energy-shell effects and initial and final state interactions.

Explicit analytic expressions are derived for the effective-range function for the case when the interaction is represented by a sum of the short-range square-well and long-range Coulomb potentials. These expressions are then transformed into forms convenient for extrapolating to the negativeenergy region and obtaining the information about bound-state properties. Alternative ways of extrapolation are discussed. Analytic properties of separate terms entering these expressions for the effective-range function and the partial-wave scattering amplitude are investigated.

The Trojan Horse nucleus invariance for the binary d(d,p)t reaction was tested by means of new experiment using the quasi free 2 H( 6 Li, pt) 4 He and 2 H( 3 He,pt)H