Measuring the ¹⁵O(α, γ)¹⁹Ne reaction in Type I X-ray bursts using the GADGET II TPC: Hardware

¹ Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
³ Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
⁴ Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830, USA
⁵ Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (USC), Spain
⁶ Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA
⁷ McMaster University, Canada
⁸ TRIUMF, Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada
⁹ The RACAH institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
¹⁰ Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark
¹¹ University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
¹² Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
¹³ Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Canada
¹⁴ IRFU, CEA Saclay, GIF-sur-Yvette, France
¹⁵ Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
¹⁶ University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

Published online: 24 February 2022

Abstract

Sensitivity studies have shown that the ¹⁵O(α, γ)¹⁹Ne reaction is the most important reaction rate uncertainty affecting the shape of light curves from Type I X-ray bursts. This reaction is dominated by the 4.03 MeV resonance in ¹⁹Ne. Previous measurements by our group have shown that this state is populated in the decay sequence of ²⁰Mg. A single ²⁰Mg(βp α)¹⁵O event through the key ¹⁵O(α, γ)¹⁹Ne resonance yields a characteristic signature: the emission of a proton and alpha particle. To achieve the granularity necessary for the identification of this signature, we have upgraded the Proton Detector of the Gaseous Detector with Germanium Tagging (GADGET) into a time projection chamber to form the GADGET II detection system. GADGET II has been fully constructed, and is entering the testing phase.