Astrophysical reaction rate for the neutron-generator reaction 13C(alpha,n)16O in asymptotic giant branch stars. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The reaction 13C(alpha,n) is considered to be the main source of neutrons for the s process in asymptotic giant branch stars. At low energies, the cross section is dominated by the 1/2+ 6.356 MeV subthreshold resonance in (17)O whose contribution at stellar temperatures is uncertain by a factor of 10. In this work, we performed the most precise determination of the low-energy astrophysical S factor using the indirect asymptotic normalization (ANC) technique. The alpha-particle ANC for the subthreshold state has been measured using the sub-Coulomb alpha-transfer reaction ((6)Li,d). Using the determined ANC, we calculated S(0), which turns out to be an order of magnitude smaller than in the nuclear astrophysics compilation of reaction rates.

published proceedings

  • Phys Rev Lett

author list (cited authors)

  • Johnson, E. D., Rogachev, G. V., Mukhamedzhanov, A. M., Baby, L. T., Brown, S., Cluff, W. T., ... Roeder, B. T.

citation count

  • 47

complete list of authors

  • Johnson, ED||Rogachev, GV||Mukhamedzhanov, AM||Baby, LT||Brown, S||Cluff, WT||Crisp, AM||Diffenderfer, E||Goldberg, VZ||Green, BW||Hinners, T||Hoffman, CR||Kemper, KW||Momotyuk, O||Peplowski, P||Pipidis, A||Reynolds, R||Roeder, BT

publication date

  • November 2006