EuNPC2015

It is in the nature of astrophysics that many of the processes and objects one tries to understand are physically inaccessible. Thus, it is important that those aspects that can be studied in the laboratory be rather well understood. One such aspect are the nuclear fusion reactions, which are at the heart of nuclear astrophysics: they influence sensitively the nucleosynthesis of the elements...

A very low background level is a key requirement for low-energy nuclear astrophysics experiments. A detailed high energy (Eg>3MeV) gamma-background study with two escape-suppressed HPGe detectors has been performed at a medium deep underground site, in the Reiche Zeche mine (150m) in Freiberg, Germany [1]. The new data complement a data set with the same detector at the Earth's surface,...

Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars play a fundamental role in the determination of the observed abundances of light mass elements. Despite great efforts, model predictions for AGB yields are rather uncertain due to the complex physical structure and the weakly constrained mass-loss rates and convection efficiencies. In addition, the poor knowledge of the cross sections of the relevant proton...

QCD-based effective field theories are becoming increasingly more powerful in describing few-body nuclear systems. These models establish a quantitative relationship between muon capture rates and fundamental astrophysical processes from which cross sections can not be measured in the laboratory, such as pp fusion in our sun. The MuSun experiment is measuring the muon capture rate on the...

Heavy-ion fusion reactions between light nuclei such as carbon and oxygen isotopes have been studied because of their significance for a wide variety of stellar burning scenarios. One important stellar reaction is 12C+12C, but it is difficult to measure it in the Gamow window because of very low cross sections and several resonances occurring. Hints can be obtained from the study of 13C+12C...

In astrophysics, the rates of neutron-capture reactions in r and s processes are proportional to the nuclear level densities (NLD) and are important in the synthesis of elements heavier than iron. The most abundant isotope of iron, 56Fe, originates from an unstable isotope of nickel, 56Ni. This isotope is produced in supernovae and decays first to Cobalt and then to iron. Still the question...

The majority of the neutron-deficient p nuclei, bypassed by the s and r process, is believed to be produced during the γ process. During this process, the nuclei are synthesized by a network of photodisintegration reactions and β decays. Reaction rates for the γ-process network are mainly predicted by statistical-model calculations as experimental data are scarce. To reduce the uncertainties...

We derived new thermonuclear 64Ge(p,γ)65As and 65As(p,γ)66Se reaction rates based on recently evaluated proton separation energies Sp and nuclear structure data from large-scale shell model calculation. These two rp processes are sensitive to adequately small change of Sp values, spectroscopic factors of proton captures, and densities of excited states of the final nucleus. The precisely...