Collaborative Research of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

The proposal aims as part of the JINA collaboration at the improved experimental study of nuclear reactions, relevant for the nucleosynthesis in stellar hydrogen and helium burning scenarios. The measurements are performed at the KN&JN high current accelerators at the University of Notre Dame. One ocus of the measurements will be the study of reactions in the NeNa cycle which is of importance for hydrogen shell burning during late stellar evolution and also for explosive hydrogen burning in novae. For helium burning, the experiments will concentrate on the measurement of stellar neutron sources during the red giant phase of stellar evolution and in supernovae shockfronts. The experiments are designed for using forward and inverse kinematics in a complementary manner. The measurements will be performed using a re-circulating gas-target system which can be operated with different light and heavy target gas material (H,He,Ne). The reaction products will be measured with a set of Ge-clover detectors for gamma-radiation and a dedicated Si-strip detector array for particles.