Estimation of the NiCu Cycle Strength and Its Impact on Type I X-Ray Bursts

Type I X-ray bursts (XRBs) are powered by thermonuclear burning on proton-rich unstable nuclides. The construction of burst models with accurate knowledge of nuclear physics is required to properly interpret burst observations. Numerous studies that have investigated the sensitivities of burst models to nuclear inputs have commonly extracted the strength of the NiCu cycle in the rp process, determined by the Cu-59(p,alpha)Ni-56 and Cu-59(p,gamma)Zn-60 thermonuclear reaction rates, as critical in the determination of reaction flow in the burst. In this study, the strength of the cycle at the XRB temperature range was estimated based on published experimental data. The nuclear properties of the compound nucleus Zn-60 were evaluated for the Cu-59(p,alpha)Ni-56 and Cu-59(p,gamma)Zn-60 reaction rate calculations. Monte Carlo rate calculations were conducted to include the large uncertainties of nuclear properties in the calculations. In the current work, a weak NiCu cycle is expected, whereas the rates adopted by the previous studies suggest a strong NiCu cycle. Model simulations were performed with the new rates to assess the impact on Type I XRBs. The results show that the estimated cycle strength does not strongly influence the model predictions of the burst light curve or synthesized abundances

Neutron spectroscopic factors of Ar34 and Ar46 from (p,d) transfer reactions

Single-neutron-transfer measurements using (p,d) reactions have been performed at 33 MeV per nucleon with proton-rich Ar34 and neutron-rich Ar46 beams in inverse kinematics. The extracted spectroscopic factors are compared to the large-basis shell-model calculations. Relatively weak quenching of the spectroscopic factors is observed between Ar34 and Ar46. The experimental results suggest that neutron correlations have a weak dependence on the asymmetry of the nucleus over this isotopic region. The present results are consistent with the systematics established from extensive studies of spectroscopic factors and dispersive optical-model analyses of Ca40-49 isotopes. They are, however, inconsistent with the trends obtained in knockout-reaction measurements. © 2011 The American Physical Society.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Direct measurement of the

Several (α, p) reactions with radioactive-ions (RI) in the αp-process are important to characterize X-ray bursts. However, some of them do not have sufficient experimental data, and the 26Si(α, p)29P reaction is one of such reactions. We performed a direct measurement of the reaction in inverse kinematics with a thick target at the CNS RI beam separator (CRIB).We used a multiplexer circuit, Mesytec MUX, to acquire data from many channels of silicon detectors. In this experimental setup, a resonant elastic scattering was measured simultaneously. The details of the experimental conditions and the preliminary results of the analysis are discussed