Photodisintegration studies on p-nuclei: The case of Mo and Sm isotopes

Nair, C.; Junghans, A. R.; Erhard, M.; Bemmerer, D.; Beyer, R.; Crespo, P.; Grosse, E.; Fauth, M.; Kosev, K.; Rusev, G.; Schilling, K. D.; Schwengner, R.; Wagner, A.

Photodisintegration studies on p-nuclei: The case of Mo and Sm isotopes

Authors

Description

In explosive stellar environments like supernovae, the temperatures are high enough for the production of heavy neutron-deficient nuclei, the socalled p-nuclei. Up to now, the knowledge of the reaction rates of p-nuclei is based on theoretical parameterizations using statistical model calculations. At the bremsstrahlung facility of the superconducting electron accelerator ELBE of FZ Dresden-Rossendorf, we aim to measure the photodisintegration rates of heavy nuclei experimentally. Photoactivation measurements on the astrophysically relevant p-nuclei 92Mo and 144Sm have been performed with bremsstrahlung end-point energies from 10.0 to 16.5 MeV. First experiments on the short-lived decays following the reaction 144Sm(gamma,n) are carried out using a pneumatic delivery system for rapid transport of activated samples. The activation yields are compared with calculations using cross sections from recent Hauser-Feshbach models.
6 pages, 3 figures