First application of the Trojan Horse Method with a Radioactive Ion Beam: study of the ${}^{18}$F($p,\alpha$)${}^{15}$O}} reaction at astrophysical energies

Abstract

Measurement of nuclear cross sections at astrophysical energies involving unstable species is one of the most challenging tasks in experimental nuclear physics. The use of indirect methods is often unavoidable in this scenario. In this paper the Trojan Horse Method is applied for the first time to a radioactive ion beam induced reaction studying the ${}^{18}$F($p,\alpha$)${}^{15}$O process at low energies relevant to astrophysics via the three body reaction ${}^2$H(${}^{18}$F,${\alpha }^{15}$O)n. The knowledge of the ${}^{18}$F($p,\alpha$)${}^{15}$O reaction rate is crucial to understand the nova explosion phenomena. The cross section of this reaction is characterized by the presence of several resonances in ${}^{19}$Ne and possibly interference effects among them. The results reported in Literature are not satisfactory and new investigations of the ${}^{18}$F($p,\alpha$)${}^{15}$O reaction cross section will be useful. In the present work the spin-parity assignments of relevant levels have been discussed and the astrophysical S-factor has been extracted considering also interference effects

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Nuclear-Astrophysics Lessons from INTEGRAL
• Suppression of the centrifugal barrier effects in the off-energy-shell neutron+${}^{17}$O interaction
• Is γ-ray emission from novae affected by interference effects in the 18F(p,α)15O reaction?
• Trojan Horse method and radioactive ion beams: study of ${}^{18}$F(p,$\alpha$)${}^{15}$O reaction at astrophysical energies

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Assessing the foundation of the Trojan Horse Method
• Spectroscopy of ${}^{19}$Ne for the thermonuclear ${}^{15}$O($\alpha ,\gamma$)${}^{19}$Ne and ${}^{18}$F($p,\alpha$)${}^{15}$O reaction rates
• Beam energy dependence and updated test of the Trojan horse nucleus invariance via the d(d,p)t measurement at ultra-low energies
• Sub-threshold states in ${}^{19}$Ne relevant to ${}^{18}$F(p,$\alpha$)${}^{15}$O
• Experimental nuclear astrophysics in Italy