Speaker
Mr
Thomas Chillery
(University of Edinburgh)
Description
Proton-induced reactions on 6Li play an important role in nuclear astrophysics studies in relation to primordial lithium abundances. Whilst big bang nucleosynthesis theory excludes the existence of “primordial” 6Li, the 6Li/7Li abundance ratio observed in pre-main sequence (PMS) stars is ~ 0.5. The 6Li(p,a)3He and 6Li(p,g)7Be reactions are the main processes that contribute to 6Li destruction in stars. Both reactions were recently studied at LUNA via proton bombardment of 6Li-enriched targets, with complimentary target composition studies performed at HZDR. Improvements on the precision of the low-energy S-factor values are expected from this study. Notably, the low-background measurement at LUNA will assist the search for a recently observed 6Li(p,g)7Be low energy resonance proposed at Er ~ 195keV. In this talk I will introduce the LUNA experimental setup and present preliminary results of the ongoing analysis.
Selected session
Nuclear Astrophysics
Primary author
Mr
Thomas Chillery
(University of Edinburgh)
