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Research

A Brief Introduction to Nuclear Astrophysics

Nuclear Astrophysics deals with nuclear processes that take place in stellar environments. It is a field that aspires to understand how stars evolve, where and how the elements are formed, what are the nuclear processes that drive stellar explosions and many other unanswered questions. To study these questions, experimental nuclear physics data and nuclear theory need to be combined in thermodynamic stellar models which then have to be compared with astronomical observations. It is this highly interdisciplinary nature of Nuclear Astrophysics that makes it one of the most exciting fields in physics.

When the first stars formed in the Universe, the only elements that existed were hydrogen, helium and very little lithium (These elements were products of a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis which I will not talk about here). However, inside the core of a star, high temperatures and densities make the combination of two light elements into a heavier one possible. In this way, two important phenomena take place. First, heavier and heavier elements are synthesized from lighter ones, until all the elements that we see today in the Universe are produced (see graph). Second, because the mass of the product nucleus is less than the mass of the light nuclei combined (at least for some reactions), each one of these processes releases energy. This energy release is the reason why stars shine. Both phenomena take place even today in almost every star, including our own sun.

Solar System Abundances.

Since hydrogen is the most abundant of all the elements, the first step to understand stellar evolution and energy generation is to study hydrogen burning nuclear processes. The two main processes of burning hydrogen are the p-p chain and the CNO cycle. In both cases four hydrogens combine to make one helium, through different sets of reactions. Each of these reactions needs to be studied experimentally and theoretically.

My research

Currently there are two main projects that I am working on:

i) The CNO reaction "17O(p,g)18F".

ii) The construction of a Jet Gas Target system for nuclear cross section measurements in inverse kinematics.

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