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Published May 2019 | Published
Journal Article Open

Impact of ^(16)O(γ,α)^(12)C measurements on the ^(12)C(α,γ)^(16)O astrophysical reaction rate

Abstract

The ^(12)C(α,γ)^(16)O reaction, an important component of stellar helium burning, plays a key role in nuclear astrophysics. It has direct impact on the evolution and final state of massive stars, while also influencing the elemental abundances resulting from nucleosynthesis in such stars. Providing a reliable estimate for the energy dependence of this reaction at stellar helium burning temperatures has been a major goal for the field. In this work, we study the role of potential new measurements of the inverse reaction, ^(16)O(γ,α)^(12)C, in reducing the overall uncertainty. A multilevel R-matrix analysis is used to make extrapolations of the astrophysical S factor for this reaction to the stellar energy of 300 keV. The statistical precision of the S-factor extrapolation is determined by performing multiple fits to existing E1and E2 ground-state capture data, including the impact of possible future measurements of the ^(16)O(γ,α)^(12)C reaction. In particular, we consider a proposed Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) experiment that will make use of a high-intensity low-energy bremsstrahlung beam that impinges on an oxygen-rich single-fluid bubble chamber in order to measure the total cross section for the inverse reaction. The importance of low-energy data as well as high-precision data is investigated.

Additional Information

© 2019 American Physical Society. Received 13 December 2018; published 2 May 2019. We thank O. Kirsebom and F. Strieder for useful discussions. This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1812340 and by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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Published - PhysRevC.99.055802.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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