Speaker
Description
Fusion reactions involving carbon and oxygen are crucial for the understanding of massive stars and of the nucleosynthesis. Besides $^{12}$C+$^{12}$C, measurements of neighbour light systems as $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O and $^{16}$O+$^{16}$O are scarce although relevant for the modelling of late carbon burning, oxygen burning in massive stars as well as explosive carbon burning of Type Ia supernovae[1]. Furthermore, a comprehensive picture of these alpha-conjugated systems might reveal the underlying microscopic origin of several puzzling observations which are still not fully understood such as the potential existence of clusters[2,3] or the fusion hindrance mechanism[4] affecting systems in sub-barrier fusion.
Following the successful first phases of $^{12}$C+$^{12}$C measurements with STELLA[5], the CarbOx project aims at precisely determining the astrophysical S-factor for the $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O and $^{16}$O+$^{16}$O reactions in coincidence. The key experimental on-going developments to achieve an enhanced energy and angular resolution needed to unambiguously resolve the increased complexity of the final states of these systems will be detailed and the sensitivity expected after the CarbOx upgrades will be discussed.
[1] Woosley et al. PRL 27 (1971)
[2] Fang et al. PRC 96 (2017)
[3] Taniguchi and Kimura, PRB 800 (2020)
[4] Jiang et al. PRL 93 (2004)
[5] Fruet et al. PRL 124 (2020)
