Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21811102l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #111.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Current stellar model simulations are at a level of precision that uncertainties in the nuclear-reaction rates are becoming significant for theoretical predictions and for the analysis of observational signatures. To address several open questions in cosmology, astrophysics, and non-Standard-Model neutrino physics, new high precision measurements of direct-capture nuclear fusion cross sections will be essential. At these low energies, fusion cross sections decrease exponentially with energy and are expected to approach femtobarn levels or less. The experimental difficulties in determining the low-energy cross sections are caused by large background rates associated with cosmic ray-induced reactions, background from natural radioactivity in the laboratory environment, and the beam-induced background on target impurities.
Natural background can be reduced by careful shielding of the target and detector environment, and beam-induced background can be reduced by active shielding techniques through event identification, but it is difficult to reduce the background component from cosmic ray muons. An underground location has the advantage that the cosmic ray-induced background is reduced by several orders of magnitude, allowing the measurements to be pushed to far lower energies than feasible above ground. This has been clearly demonstrated at LUNA by the successful studies of critical reactions in the pp-chains and first reaction studies in the CNO cycles. The DIANA project (Dakota Ion Accelerators for Nuclear Astrophysics) is a collaboration between the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, Colorado School of Mines, Regis University, University of North Carolina, Western Michigan University, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to build a nuclear astrophysics accelerator facility deep underground. The DIANA accelerator facility is being designed to achieve large laboratory reaction rates by delivering two orders of magnitude higher ion beams to a high density, super-sonic jet-gas target. The conceptual design of the DIANA accelerator facility and the status of the facility is presented.
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