Precision study of ground state capture in the 14N(p,gamma)15O reaction
Abstract
The rate of the hydrogen-burning carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle is controlled by the slowest process, 14N(p,gamma)15O, which proceeds by capture to the ground and several excited states in 15O. Previous extrapolations for the ground state contribution disagreed by a factor 2, corresponding to 15% uncertainty in the total astrophysical S-factor. At the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) 400 kV accelerator placed deep underground in the Gran Sasso facility in Italy, a new experiment on ground state capture has been carried out at 317.8, 334.4, and 353.3 keV center-of-mass energy. Systematic corrections have been reduced considerably with respect to previous studies by using a Clover detector and by adopting a relative analysis. The previous discrepancy has been resolved, and ground state capture no longer dominates the uncertainty of the total S-factor.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0807.4919,
title = {Precision study of ground state capture in the 14N(p,gamma)15O reaction},
author = {M. Marta and A. Formicola and Gy. Gyurky and D. Bemmerer and C. Broggini and A. Caciolli and P. Corvisiero and H. Costantini and Z. Elekes and Zs. Fulop and G. Gervino and A. Guglielmetti and C. Gustavino and G. Imbriani and M. Junker and R. Kunz and A. Lemut and B. Limata and C. Mazzocchi and R. Menegazzo and P. Prati and V. Roca and C. Rolfs and M. Romano and C. Rossi Alvarez and E. Somorjai and O. Straniero and F. Strieder and F. Terrasi and H. P. Trautvetter and A. Vomiero},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.4919},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
Phys. Rev. C, rapid comm., accepted