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Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 172502 (2004) [4 pages]

New Approach for Measuring Properties of rp-Process Nuclei

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R. R. C. Clement1,2 *, D. Bazin1, W. Benenson1,2, B. A. Brown1,2, A. L. Cole1, M. W. Cooper1, P. A. DeYoung3, A. Estrade1,2, M. A. Famiano1, N. H. Frank1,2, A. Gade1, T. Glasmacher1,2, P. T. Hosmer1,2, W. G. Lynch1,2, F. Montes1,2, W. F. Mueller1, G. F. Peaslee4, P. Santi1 †, H. Schatz1,2,5, B. M. Sherrill1,2,5, M-J. van Goethem1, and M. S. Wallace1,2
1National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
3Department of Physics, Hope College, Holland, Michigan 49422, USA
4Department of Chemistry, Hope College, Holland, Michigan 49422, USA
5Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA

Received 21 November 2003; published 30 April 2004

A new experimental approach was developed that can reduce the uncertainties in astrophysical rapid proton capture (rp) process calculations due to nuclear data. This approach utilizes neutron removal from a radioactive ion beam to populate the nuclear states of interest. Excited states were deduced by the γ-decay spectra measured in a semiconductor Ge-detector array. In the first case studied, 33Ar, excited states were measured with uncertainties of several keV. The 2 orders of magnitude improvement in the uncertainty of the level energies resulted in a 3 orders of magnitude improvement in the uncertainty of the calculated 32Cl(p,γ)33Ar rate that is critical to the modeling of the rp process. This approach has the potential to measure key properties of almost all interesting nuclei on the rp-process path.


©2004 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.172502
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.172502
PACS: 26.50.+x, 25.40.Lw, 25.60.Je, 27.30.+t

* Electronic address: clement5@msu.edu
† Present address: Los Alamos National Laboratory (N-1), Los Alamos, NM, USA.

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