Development of the ELISSA array: prototype testing at Laboratori Nazionali del Sud

G L Guardo,S Chesnevskaya,G G Rapisarda,S Romano,R G Pizzone,A Anzalone,M La Cognata,M Gulino,D Filipescu ,Walter Crucillá ,A Taffara ,D L Balabanski ,А Туміно ,C Matei ,D Lattuada ,C Spitaleri,Y Xu

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201818402006

Abstract

The Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) facility, underconstruction in Magurele near Bucharest in Romania, will provide high-intensity andhigh-resolution gamma ray beams that can be used to address hotly debated problems in nuclear astrophysics, such as the accurate measurements of the cross sections of the24Mg(γ,α)20Ne reaction For this purpose, a silicon strip detector array (named ELISSA) will be realized in acommon effort by ELI-NP and Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (INFN-LNS), in order to measure excitation functions and angular distributions over a wide energy and angular range. A prototype of ELISSA was built and tested at INFN-LNS in Catania (Italy) with the support of ELI-NP. In this occasion, we have carried out experiments with alpha sources and with a 11 MeV 7Li beam that show up a very good energy resolution (better than 1%) and very good position resolution, of the order of 1 mm. Moreover, a threshold of 150 keV can be easily achieved with no cooling.

Highlights

Introduction9th European Summer School on Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics determine a much more accurate cross section to be used in nuclear reaction network calculations to improve the knowledge of the pre-supernova chemical composition
The Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) facility, under construction in Magurele near Bucharest in Romania, will provide high-intensity and high-resolution gamma ray beams that can be used to address hotly debated problems in nuclear astrophysics, such as the accurate measurements of the cross sections of the 24Mg(γ,α)20Ne reaction For this purpose, a silicon strip detector array will be realized in a common effort by ELI-NP and Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (INFN-LNS), in order to measure excitation functions and angular distributions over a wide energy and angular range
9th European Summer School on Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics determine a much more accurate cross section to be used in nuclear reaction network calculations to improve the knowledge of the pre-supernova chemical composition

Summary

Introduction

9th European Summer School on Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics determine a much more accurate cross section to be used in nuclear reaction network calculations to improve the knowledge of the pre-supernova chemical composition. Silicon burning sets the chemical composition of the star right before the core collapse and the subsequent supernova explosion, constituting a key process for the understanding of core-collapse supernovae [3] In this framework, the 24Mg(γ,α)20Ne reaction governs the downward flow from 24Mg to 4He, determining the effective rate of 28Si destruction, making its reaction rate critically important to stellar models [3]. In the temperature range of interest, around 3.9·109 K, the 20Ne(α,γ)24Mg reaction rate may be subject to systematic errors of the order of a factor of 2, as can be seen from the different results reported in [4] For those reasons, a new measurement using the gamma radiation beam with unique characteristics at ELI-NP may allow us to resolve conflicting data

The ELISSA detector

Findings

Test on ELISSA prototype