Review and new concepts for neutron-capture measurements of astrophysical interest

Abstract

The idea of slow-neutron capture nucleosynthesis formulated in 1957 triggered a tremendous experimental effort in different laboratories worldwide to measure the relevant nuclear physics input quantities, namely ($n,\gamma$) cross sections over the stellar temperature range (from few eV up to several hundred keV) for most of the isotopes involved from Fe up to Bi. A brief historical review focused on total energy detectors will be presented to illustrate how, advances in instrumentation have led, over the years, to the assessment and discovery of many new aspects of $s$-process nucleosynthesis and to the progressive refinement of theoretical models of stellar evolution. A summary will be presented on current efforts to develop new detection concepts, such as the Total-Energy Detector with $\gamma$-ray imaging capability (i-TED). The latter is based on the simultaneous combination of Compton imaging with neutron time-of-flight (TOF) techniques, in order to achieve a superior level of sensitivity and selectivity in the measurement of stellar neutron capture rates.

arXiv commentNuclear Physics in Astrophysics IX - Conference Proceedings

References in corpus (8)

• The s Process: Nuclear Physics, Stellar Models, Observations
• Neutron capture cross section of unstable 63Ni: implications for stellar nucleosynthesis
• The temperature and chronology of heavy-element synthesis in low-mass stars
• First i-TED demonstrator: a Compton imager with Dynamic Electronic Collimation
• GEANT4 simulation of the neutron background of the C${}_6$D${}_6$ set-up for capture studies at n_TOF
• $\gamma$-Ray position reconstruction in large monolithic LaCl${}_3$(Ce) crystals with SiPM readout
• On the performance of large monolithic LaCl3(Ce) crystals coupled to pixelated silicon photosensors
• First tests of the applicability of $\gamma$-ray imaging for background discrimination in time-of-flight neutron capture measurements