AUTHOR=Spartà R. , La Cognata M. , Guardo G. L. , Palmerini S. , Sergi M. L. , D’Agata G. , Lamia L. , Lattuada D. , Oliva A. A. , Pizzone R. G. , Rapisarda G. G. , Romano S. , Tumino A. 

TITLE=Neutron-Driven Nucleosynthesis in Stellar Plasma

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2022.896011

DOI=10.3389/fphy.2022.896011

ISSN=2296-424X

ABSTRACT=<p>A large uncertainty for the slow neutron capture nucleosynthesis (s-process) models is caused by the amount of neutrons available to the process itself. This quantity is strongly affected by the <sup>13</sup>C(<italic>α</italic>,n)<sup>16</sup>O, and <sup>22</sup>Ne(<italic>α</italic>,n)<sup>25</sup>Mg reaction cross sections, whose measurements at energies corresponding to the s-process thermal conditions (<inline-formula id="inf1"><mml:math id="m1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mn>10</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:math></inline-formula> keV) are mainly hampered by the Coulomb barrier. For this reason, indirect approaches could offer a complementary way of investigation and, among these, the Trojan Horse Method (THM) has been applied to determine these cross sections overcoming the Coulomb barrier. With this approach, a low-energy binary reaction cross section can be obtained selecting the quasi-free contribution from a suitable three-body reaction cross section, taking advantage of the cluster structure of proper nuclei.</p>