Primordial nucleosynthesis revisited via Trojan Horse Results

¹ INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, Catania, Italy
² Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Catania, Catania, Italy
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, Commerce, TX 75025, USA
⁴ Cyclotron Institute, Texas A& M University, College Station, TX, USA
⁵ Facoltà di Ingegneria e Architettura, Università Kore, Enna, Italy

Published online: 11 May 2016

Abstract

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) requires several nuclear physics inputs and nuclear reaction rates. An up-to-date compilation of direct cross sections of d(d,p)t, d(d,n)³He and ³He(d,p)⁴He reactions is given, being these ones among the most uncertain bare-nucleus cross sections. An intense experimental effort has been carried on in the last decade to apply the Trojan Horse Method (THM) to study reactions of relevance for the BBN and measure their astrophysical S(E)-factor. The reaction rates and the relative error for the four reactions of interest are then numerically calculated in the temperature ranges of relevance for BBN (0.01<T₉ <10). Their value were therefore used as input physics for primordial nucleosynthesis calculations in order to evaluate their impact on the calculated primordial abundances of D, ^3,4He and ⁷Li. These were compared with the observational primordial abundance estimates in different astrophysical sites. A comparison was also performed with calculations using other reaction rates compilations available in literature.