A novel technique has been developed, which will open exciting new opportunities for studying the very neutron-rich nuclei involved in the r-process. As a proof-of-principle, the γ-spectra from the β-decay of 76Ga have been measured with the SuN detector at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. The nuclear level density and γ-ray strength function are extracted and used as input to Hauser-Feshbach calculations. The present technique is shown to strongly constrain the 75Ge(n,γ)76Ge cross section and reaction rate.
@article{arxiv.1408.6498,
title = {Novel technique for constraining r-process (n,$\gamma$) reaction rates},
author = {A. Spyrou and S. N. Liddick and A. C. Larsen and M. Guttormsen and K. Cooper and A. C. Dombos and D. J. Morrissey and F. Naqvi and G. Perdikakis and S. J. Quinn and T. Renstrøm and J. A. Rodriguez and A. Simon and C. S. Sumithrarachchi and R. G. T. Zegers},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.6498},
year = {2014}
}