Speaker
Description
The Nuclear Astrophysics Group (NAG) at IFIN-HH has been carrying out a campaign to study fusion reactions important in stellar nucleosynthesis, at sub-Coulomb barrier energies. More recently, we have been focusing on reactions between $^{12}$C and $^{16}$O nuclei, as they define stellar scenarios in various important evolution phases of massive stars.
In the past, this has been done by irradiating targets of interest at the 3 MV Tandetron facility and measuring their deactivation in the ultra-low background laboratory sitting inside the Slanic salt mine. This allowed us to reach cross-sections of the order of hundred pb for the reaction $^{13}$C + $^{12}$C. As a neighboring reaction to the very important $^{12}$C + $^{12}$C, these measurements provided significant insight into the behavior of the cross-section at very low energies and the fusion mechanisms that are theorized to take place.[1]
In my poster, I will show results from the measurement of $^{13}$C + $^{16}$O, the next reaction of interest for our study. It was chosen because it is a neighboring system to $^{12}$C + $^{16}$O with an extra neutron that produces decaying channels which can be measured through deactivation. In addition, I will also show some preliminary results from another reaction in our study, $^{12,13}$C + $^{16}$F, which was also chosen for its similarity as a mass system.
[1] N. Zhang, D. Tudor et al, Phys. Lett. B 801, 135170 (2020).