How well do we understand the reaction rate of C burning?

• Main Authors: Courtin S., Jiang C.L., Fruet G., Auranen K., Avila M.L., Ayangeakaa A.D., Back B.B., Bottoni S., Carpenter M., Dickerson C., DiGiovine B., Greene J.P., Henderson D.J., Hoffman C.R., Janssens R.V.F., Kay B.P., Kuvin S.A., Lauritsen T., Pardo R.C., Rehm K.E., Santiago-Gonzalez D., Sethi J., Seweryniak D., Talwar R., Ugalde C., Zhu S., Deibel C.M., Marley S.T., Bourgin D., Haas F., Heine M., Montanari D., Jenkins D.G., Morris L.G., Lefebvre-Schuhl A., Almaraz-Calderon S., Fang X., Tang X.D., Alcorta M., Bucher B., Albers M., Bertone P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2017-01-01
• Series: EPJ Web of Conferences
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201716300011

Carbon burning plays a crucial role in stellar evolution, where this reaction is an important route for the production of heavier elements. A particle-γ coincidence technique that minimizes the backgrounds to which this reaction is subject and provides reliable cross sections has been used at the Argonne National Laboratory to measure fusion cross-sections at deep sub-barrier energies in the 12C+12C system. The corresponding excitation function has been extracted down to a cross section of about 6 nb. This indicates the existence of a broad S-factor maximum for this system. Experimental results are presented and discussed.