join us at 10:00

mgr. Eliana Masha (Università degli studi di Milano and INFN, Sezione di Milano, Milano, Italy)
The cross sections of nuclear reactions that take place in different astrophysical scenariosare crucial ingredients to understand the synthesis of the elements and energy generation. In stars, nuclear reactions occur at energies well below the Coulomb barrier. Therefore, theircross sections are often too small and very difficult to be measured in laboratories at theEarth’s surface, where the signal would be covered by the cosmic-ray induced background. An effective solution to suppress the cosmic-ray induced background is to perform experiments in underground laboratories. The extremely low background reached at the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) located deep underground at Gran Sasso National Laboratories (Italy) allows to measure nuclear cross sections directly at the energies of astrophysical interest. In the last 30 years, many crucial reactions involved in different astrophysical scenarios have been measured at LUNA.
The presentation will provide an overview of the measurements of 22Ne(α; γ)26Mg and20Ne(p; γ)21Na reactions ongoing at LUNA. The 22Ne(α; γ)26Mg reaction competes with the22Ne(α; n)25Mg reaction which is the main source of neutrons for the s-process in low-massAsymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) and massive stars. Moreover, it has been found that theuncertainty of the 22Ne(α; γ)26Mg reaction rate affects also the nucleosynthesis of isotopesbetween 26Mg and 31P in intermediate-mass AGB stars. The 22Ne(α; γ)26Mg reaction rate is influenced by the 395 keV resonance which has been studied only indirectly leading to a widerange of possible values for its resonance strength (10-15 - 10-9 eV). For the first time LUNAmeasured directly the resonance at 395 keV. The experimental details and preliminary resultswill be shown, together with their possible impact on the 22Ne(α; γ)26Mg reaction rate.The 20Ne(p; γ)21Na is the first reaction of the NeNa cycle and having the slowest reaction rate it controls the speed of the entire cycle. The rate of the 20Ne(p; γ)21Na reaction, depending on the temperature, is dominated by the high energy tail of a sub-threshold state at ER = 6.7 keV, a direct capture component and a narrow resonance at ER = 366 keV. The first campaign,dedicated to the study of the 366 keV resonance is ongoing at LUNA. The experimentalapproach as well as some "online" analysis will be shown.
Seminarium on-line na platformie zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86759935850?pwd=ejZhaHBjUTNncVVDZFJTRnVaYW9MQT09
ID: 867 5993 5850
Passcode: 909432
join us at 10:00

Dr Giulia Colucci (ŚLCJ UW)
Szanowni Państwo,
Rozpoczynamy cotygodniowe spotkania „Seminarium Fizyki Jądra Atomowego”.
Zgodnie z poleceniem władz UW i Wydziału Fizyki, zajęcia te będą odbywały się w trybie „online” za pomocą programu „zoom.us”. Link (ten sam dla wszystkich spotkań), aktywny w każdy czwartek w godz. od 10.00 do 12.00 to:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86759935850?pwd=ejZhaHBjUTNncVVDZFJTRnVaYW9MQT09
ID: 867 5993 5850
Passcode: 909432
Abstract: Heavy-ion fusion at near-barrier energies is a complex phenomenon. The availability of radioactive beams has opened new possibilities to investigate these reactions - the very neutron-rich beams of the SPES facility [1] at relatively low intensities may enable the study of near- and sub-barrier fusion to exotic systems. However, the use of RIBs is often very challenging because of the low available intensities and the forward focusing of the fusion evaporation residues (ER). Thus, applications of radioactive beams require detection systems with very high efficiency and detectors that avoid unnecessary energy straggling and angular dispersion and assure fast response.
A new set-up for fusion cross section measurements, especially designed for the low intensity beams which will be delivered by the SPES facility, has been developed and installed and it is presently in use at the National Laboratories of Legnaro (LNL), in its initial operation phase. The set-up is inspired on a similar one built at Oak Ridge [2] some years ago, with a significant improvement due to the use of a very fast ionization chamber (IC). This new fast IC is designed to ensure a high-counting-rate particle identification for fusion studies involving exotic beams up to 105 pps. Indeed, the IC will be placed at 0° with respect to the beam direction without filtering out the beam ions in any way. To reduce the response time of the ionization chamber, a design using a series of tilted electrodes has been adopted [3]. The aim is to be able to detect and identify fusion events within a counting rate up to 100-200 kHz. The set-up already existing at LNL for fusion measurements (based on the electrostatic beam deflector) has been upgraded by using the new IC and will remain in use for experiments with high-intensity stable (and upcoming exotic) beams. Several tests with stable beams have been performed to optimize the performance of the Fast IC [4]. The detector has been also employed for the experimental study of sub-barrier fusion in the 36S + 50Ti, 51V systems [5]. Aim of the experiment was to investigate possible effects of the non-zero spin of 51V ground state on the sub-barrier excitation function and on the shape of the barrier distribution. The fundamental concepts of a IC with fast response will be presented, the results of the in-beam tests and experiment performed will be showed in this seminar.
REFERENCES
[1] The SPES project: technical and scientific reports http://www.lnl.infn.it/ spes/
[2] D. Shapira et al., Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A 551, 330 (2005)
[3] K.Y. Chae et al., Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A 751, 6 (2014)
[4] G.Colucci et al., Acta Phys. Pol. B 50, 573 (2019)
[5] G. Colucci at al., Eur. Phys. J. A 55, 111 (2019)