Nuclear astrophysics with storage rings
Prof. Rene Reifarth
University of Frankfurt
Ion storage rings allow the investigation of exotic nuclei. This includes nuclear properties like half-life time under stellar conditions and 2-body reactions like proton captures in the astrophysically important Gamow window.
Bound-state beta decay is one of the mechanisms altering the beta-decay half-life under stellar conditions. While filled under the cold terrestrial conditions, atomic states can be emptied in the hot plasma of a star. This changes the minimum energy necessary for the emission of the electron and can lead to drastically shortened half-lives. This effect can be ideally investigated in ion storage rings, where it is possible to store ionized atoms for a long time and observe their decays.
Fusion reactions with at least one unstable reaction partner often require a beam of the unstable partner and a stable target. Modern Radioactive Ion Beam facilities have limited ion production rates. It is therefore advantageous to recycle the beam after it passed the target once, which implies the usage of a storage ring.
I will review recent achievements at the Experimental Storage Ring at GSI/FAIR and give an outlook to possible future experiments and setups.
Hosted by Prof. Wiescher
All interested persons are invited to attend remotely—email nsladmin@nd.edu for information.