Experiments for explosive nuclear reactions in stellar environments

Abstract

One of the major ways of studying the Universe is laboratory measurements of the nuclear reactions that are responsible for energy generation and creating new elements in stellar environments. There are many key nuclear reactions that require laboratory measurements for understanding stellar sites such as the Sun, novae, supernovae, and x-ray bursts. Two such reactions that are important for understanding the break-out mechanism from the Hot CNO cycle in explosive hydrogen burnings are the O-14(alpha,p)F-17 and O-15(alpha,gamma)Ne-19 reactions. A brief review of the above reactions and some new experimental methods to measure one of the reactions, the O-14(alpha,p)F-17 reaction, using radioactive beams at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in U.S. and CNS in Japan will be discussed.