Ambiguities in the rate of oxygen formation during stellar helium burning in the12C(α,γ) reaction

Abstract

The rate of oxygen formation determines the C/O ratio during stellar helium burning. It is the single most important nuclear input of stellar evolution theory including the evolution of Type II and Type Ia supernova. Yet the low energy cross section of the fusion of 4He + 12C denoted as the 12C(a,g)16O reaction still remains uncertain after forty years of extensive work. We analyze and critically review the most recent measurements of complete angular distributions of the outgoing gamma-rays at very low energies (Ecm > 1.0 MeV). Our analysis of the angular distribution measured with the EUROGAM/GANDI arrays lead us to conclude considerably larger error bars than published hence they are excluded from the current sample of "world data". We show that the current sample of "world data" of the measured E2 cross section factors below 1.7 MeV cluster to two distinct groups that lead to two distinct extrapolations of SE2(300) ~ 60 or ~ 154 keVb. We point to a much neglected discrepancy between the measured E1-E2 phase difference (phi_12) and unitarity as required by the Watson theorem, suggesting systematic problem(s) of some of the measured gamma-ray angular distributions. The ambiguity of the extrapolated SE2(300) together with a previously observed ambiguity of SE1(300) represent the current state of the art of the field and they must be resolved by future measurements of complete and detailed angular distributions of the 12C(a,g) reaction at very low energies (Ecm < 1.0 MeV).