No Arabic abstract
The nucleosynthesis of light elements, from helium up to silicon, mainly occurs in Red Giant and Asymptotic Giant Branch stars and Novae. The relative abundances of the synthesized nuclides critically depend on the rates of the nuclear processes involved, often through non-trivial reaction chains, combined with complex mixing mechanisms. In this review, we summarize the contributions made by LUNA experiments in furthering our understanding of nuclear reaction rates necessary for modeling nucleosynthesis in AGB stars and Novae explosions.
Angle-integrated cross-section measurements of the $^{56}$Ni(d,n) and (d,p) stripping reactions have been performed to determine the single-particle strengths of low-lying excited states in the mirror nuclei pair $^{57}$Cu-$^{57}$Ni situated adjacent to the doubly magic nucleus $^{56}$Ni. The reactions were studied in inverse kinematics utilizing a beam of radioactive $^{56}$Ni ions in conjunction with the GRETINA $gamma$-array. Spectroscopic factors are compared with new shell-model calculations using a full $pf$ model space with the GPFX1A Hamiltonian for the isospin-conserving strong interaction plus Coulomb and charge-dependent Hamiltonians. These results were used to set new constraints on the $^{56}$Ni(p,$gamma$)$^{57}$Cu reaction rate for explosive burning conditions in x-ray bursts, where $^{56}$Ni represents a key waiting point in the astrophysical rp-process.
In the absence of a third dredge-up episode during the asymptotic giant branch phase, white dwarf models evolved from low-metallicity progenitors have a thick hydrogen envelope, which makes hydrogen shell burning be the most important energy source. We investigate the pulsational stability of white dwarf models with thick envelopes to see whether nonradial $g$-mode pulsations are triggered by hydrogen burning, with the aim of placing constraints on hydrogen shell burning in cool white dwarfs and on a third dredge-up during the asymptotic giant branch evolution of their progenitor stars. We construct white-dwarf sequences from low-metallicity progenitors by means of full evolutionary calculations, and analyze their pulsation stability for the models in the range of effective temperatures $T_{rm eff} sim 15,000,-, 8,000$ K. We demonstrate that, for white dwarf models with masses $M_{star} lesssim 0.71,rm M_{sun}$ and effective temperatures $8,500 lesssim T_{rm eff} lesssim 11,600$ K that evolved from low-metallicity progenitors ($Z= 0.0001$, $0.0005$, and $0.001$) the dipole ($ell= 1$) and quadrupole ($ell=2$) $g_1$ modes are excited mostly due to the hydrogen-burning shell through the $varepsilon$-mechanism, in addition to other $g$ modes driven by either the $kappa-gamma$ or the convective driving mechanism. However, the $varepsilon$ mechanism is insufficient to drive these modes in white dwarfs evolved from solar-metallicity progenitors. We suggest that efforts should be made to observe the dipole $g_1$ mode in white dwarfs associated with low-metallicity environments, such as globular clusters and/or the galactic halo, to place constraints on hydrogen shell burning in cool white dwarfs and the third dredge-up episode during the preceding asymptotic giant branch phase.
We have developed a technique to measure beta-delayed proton decay of proton-rich nuclei produced and separated with the MARS recoil spectrometer of Texas A&M University. The short-lived radioactive species are produced in-flight, separated, then slowed down (from about 40 MeV/u) and implanted in the middle of very thin Si detectors. The beam is pulsed and beta-p decay of the pure sources collected in beam is measured between beam pulses. Implantation avoids the problems with detector windows and allows us to measure protons with energies as low as 200 keV from nuclei with lifetimes of 100 ms or less. Using this technique, we have studied the isotopes 23Al and 31Cl, both important for understanding explosive H-burning in novae. They were produced in the reactions 24Mg(p,2n)23Al and 32S(p,2n)31Cl, respectively, in inverse kinematics, from stable beams at 48 and 40 MeV/u, respectively. We give details about the technique, its performances and the results for 23Al and 31Cl beta-p decay. The technique has shown a remarkable selectivity to beta-delayed charged-particle emission and would work even at radioactive beam rates of a few pps. The states populated are resonances for the radiative proton capture reactions 22Na(p,g)23Mg and 30P(p,g)31S, respectively.
Model predictions of the amount of the radioisotope 26Al produced in hydrogen-burning environments require reliable estimates of the thermonuclear rates for the 26gAl(p,{gamma})27Si and 26mAl(p,{gamma})27Si reactions. These rates depend upon the spectroscopic properties of states in 27Si within about 1 MeV of the 26gAl+p threshold (Sp = 7463 keV). We have studied the 28Si(3He,{alpha})27Si reaction at 25 MeV using a high-resolution quadrupole-dipole-dipole-dipole magnetic spectrograph. For the first time with a transfer reaction, we have constrained J{pi} values for states in 27Si over Ex = 7.0 - 8.1 MeV through angular distribution measurements. Aside from a few important cases, we generally confirm the energies and spin-parity assignments reported in a recent {gamma}-ray spectroscopy study. The magnitudes of neutron spectroscopic factors determined from shell-model calculations are in reasonable agreement with our experimental values extracted using this reaction.
We compute the rate of diffusive nuclear burning for hydrogen on the surface of a magnetar (Soft Gamma-Ray Repeater or Anomalous X-Ray Pulsar). We find that hydrogen at the photosphere will be burned on an extremely rapid timescale of hours to years, depending on composition of the underlying material. Improving on our previous studies, we explore the effect of a maximally thick inert helium layer, previously thought to slow down the burning rate. Since hydrogen diffuses faster in helium than through heavier elements, we find this helium buffer actually increases the burning rate for magnetars. We compute simple analytic scalings of the burning rate with temperature and magnetic field for a range of core temperature. We conclude that magnetar photospheres are very unlikely to contain hydrogen. This motivates theoretical work on heavy element atmospheres that are needed to measure effective temperature from the observed thermal emission and constrains models of AXPs that rely on magnetar cooling through thick light element envelopes.