Speaker
Artemis Spyrou
(National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and Department of Physics & Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA)
Description
Proton, neutron and alpha-particle capture reactions are the main contributors towards the understanding
of the p-process nucleosynthesis. Although the reactions involved in this process are mainly
photodisintegrations, measuring the inverse reactions can be even more helpful than the measurement
of the gamma
-induced reactions themselves. Recently there have been major experimental efforts
to measure (p,
gamma) and (alpha,gamma
) reactions in the medium heavy mass region, at astrophysicaly relevant energies. These investigations, however, are limited in nuclei along the valley of stability. The
development of re-accelerated rare isotope beams enables the study of such reactions for unstable
nuclei in inverse kinematics. The small cross sections of these reactions in combination with the
low beam intensities of rare isotope beams make such experiments difficult and the use of a high
efficiency detection system is crucial. A 4pi
ray calorimeter would be ideal for such measurements
since its large angular coverage enables the efficient summation of the emitted
rays. The Q-value
of most of the relevant reactions is large enough that the resulting summing peak would be expected
at high energies, where the
ray spectrum is practically background free. This method has been
used successfully in experiments with stable beams and is a promising technique to be applied for
p-process measurements at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory with rare isotope
beams from ReA3.
Author
Artemis Spyrou
(National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and Department of Physics & Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA)