No Arabic abstract
The LUNA (Laboratory Underground for Nuclear Astrophysics) facility has been designed to study nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest. It is located deep underground in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, Italy. Two electrostatic accelerators, with 50 and 400 kV maximum voltage, in combination with solid and gas target setups allowed to measure the total cross sections of the radiative capture reactions $^2$H(p,$gamma$)3He and $^{14}$N(p,$gamma$)$^{15}$O within their relevant Gamow peaks. We report on the gamma background in the Gran Sasso laboratory measured by germanium and bismuth germanate detectors, with and without an incident proton beam. A method to localize the sources of beam induced background using the Doppler shift of emitted gamma rays is presented. The feasibility of radiative capture studies at energies of astrophysical interest is discussed for several experimental scenarios.
The muLan experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute will measure the lifetime of the positive muon with a precision of 1 ppm, giving a value for the Fermi coupling constant G_F at the level of 0.5 ppm. Meanwhile, by measuring the observed lifetime of the negative muon in pure hydrogen, the muCap experiment will determine the rate of muon capture, giving the protons pseudoscalar coupling g_p to 7%. This coupling can be calculated precisely from heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory and therefore permits a test of QCDs chiral symmetry.
Background:The design of new nuclear reactors and transmutation devices requires to reduce the present neutron cross section uncertainties of minor actinides. Purpose: Reduce the $^{243}$Am(n,$gamma$) cross section uncertainty. Method: The $^{243}$Am(n,$gamma$) cross section has been measured at the n_TOF facility at CERN with a BaF$_{2}$ Total Absorption Calorimeter, in the energy range between 0.7 eV and 2.5 keV. Results: The $^{243}$Am(n,$gamma$) cross section has been successfully measured in the mentioned energy range. The resolved resonance region has been extended from 250 eV up to 400 eV. In the unresolved resonance region our results are compatible with one of the two incompatible capture data sets available below 2.5 keV. The data available in EXFOR and in the literature has been used to perform a simple analysis above 2.5 keV. Conclusions: The results of this measurement contribute to reduce the $^{243}$Am(n,$gamma$) cross section uncertainty and suggest that this cross section is underestimated up to 25% in the neutron energy range between 50 eV and a few keV in the present evaluated data libraries.
The formalism that describes radiative-capture reactions at low energies within an extended two-cluster potential model is presented. Construction of the operator of single-photon emission is based on a generalisation of the Siegert theorem with which the amplitude of the electromagnetic process is constructed in an explicitly gauge-independent way. While the starting point for this construction is a microscopic (single-nucleon) current model, the resulting operator of low-energy photon emission by a two-cluster system is expressed in terms of macroscopic quantities for the clusters and does not depend directly on their intrinsic coordinates and momenta. The multichannel algebraic scattering (MCAS) approach has been used to construct the initial- and final-state wave functions. We present a general expression for the scattering wave function obtained from the MCAS T matrix taking into account inelastic channels and Coulomb distortion. The developed formalism has been tested on the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be reaction cross section at astrophysical energies. The energy dependence of the evaluated cross section and S factor agrees well with that extracted from measurement though the calculated quantities slightly overestimate data.
We report on a new measurement of $^{14}$N(p,$gamma$)$^{15}$O for the ground state capture transition at $E_p$ = 360, 380 and 400 keV, using the 400 kV LUNA accelerator. The true coincidence summing effect --the major source of error in the ground state capture determination-- has been significantly reduced by using a Clover--type gamma detector.
We report the first measurement of the total MUON flux underground at the Davis Campus of the Sanford Underground Research Facility at the 4850 ft level. Measurements were done with the Majorana Demonstrator veto system arranged in two different configurations. The measured total flux is (5.31+/-0.17) x 10^-9 muons/s/cm^2.