Activation measurement of the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be cross section at low energy

Abstract

The nuclear physics input from the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be cross section is a major uncertainty in the fluxes of 7Be and 8B neutrinos from the Sun predicted by solar models and in the 7Li abundance obtained in big-bang nucleosynthesis calculations. The present work reports on a new precision experiment using the activation technique at energies directly relevant to big-bang nucleosynthesis. Previously such low energies had been reached experimentally only by the prompt-gamma technique and with inferior precision. Using a windowless gas target, high beam intensity and low background gamma-counting facilities, the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be cross section has been determined at 127, 148 and 169 keV center-of-mass energy with a total uncertainty of 4%. The sources of systematic uncertainty are discussed in detail. The present data can be used in big-bang nucleosynthesis calculations and to constrain the extrapolation of the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be astrophysical S-factor to solar energies.

References in corpus (2)

• First measurement of the 14N(p,gamma)15O cross section down to 70 keV
• Feasibility of low energy radiative capture experiments at the LUNA underground accelerator facility

Cited by in corpus (37)

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• Constraining Big Bang lithium production with recent solar neutrino data
• Advances in Radiative Capture Studies at LUNA with a Segmented BGO Detector
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• Low-energy radiative-capture reactions within two-cluster coupled-channel description
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• Solar Model Parameters and Direct Measurements of Solar Neutrino Fluxes
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