Experimental study of the key astrophysical 18Ne(α, p)21Na reaction

The 18Ne(α, p)21Na reaction is thought to be one of the key breakout reaction from the hot CNO cycle to the rp-process in X-ray bursts. We investigated the resonant properties of the compound nucleus 22Mg by measuring the resonant elastic scattering of 21Na+p. An 89 MeV 21Na radioactive beam was produced by CRIB and then bombarded a 93-μm-thick polyethylene target. The 21Na beam intensity was about 2× 105 pps, with a purity of about 70% on the target. The recoiled protons were measured by three sets of ΔE-E telescope respectively. A wide excitation energy range of 5.5-9.2 MeV in 22Mg was scanned with a thick-target method. Some preliminary results are shown. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence.