Studies of photo-nuclear reactions at astrophysical energies with an active-target TPC

¹ Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
² University of Connecticut, CT, USA
³ Physics Department, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
⁴ Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, Durham, NC, USA
⁵ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
⁶ IFIN-HH / ELI-NP, Bucharest-Magurele, Romania
⁷ Department of Engineering and Mathematics, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
⁸ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

^* e-mail: chiara.mazzocchi@fuw.edu.pl
^** Present address: European Spallation Source ERIC, Partikelgatan 2, 22484 Lund, Sweden

Published online: 22 March 2023

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the High Intensity γ-ray Source (HIγS) facility at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) in Durham, NC, USA to measure the cross-section of the key astrophysical thermonuclear reaction ¹²C(α,γ)¹⁶O by means of its inverse photo-disintegration process. A high-intensity monochromatic γ-ray beam interacted with the CO₂ gas in the active volume of the Warsaw active target TPC detector. The reaction products were detected and their momenta reconstructed, so to also determine angular correlations. Data were collected at 15 beam energies ranging from 8.51 to 13.9 MeV. Preliminary results are presented.