Nuclear Astrophysics at ELI-NP: the ELISSA prototype tested at Laboratori Nazionali del Sud

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

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201716501026

Abstract

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 24 Mg( γ,α ) 20 Ne reaction, that is fundamental to determine the effective rate of 28 Si destruction right before the core collapse and the subsequent supernova explosion.For this purpose, a silicon strip detector array (named ELISSA, acronym for Extreme Light Infrastructure Silicon Strip 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.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 7 Li beam. Thanks to our approach, the first results of those tests 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

1.1 The Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) facility high brightness relativistic electron bunches and able to provide gamma beams with unprecedented features: continuous tuneable gamma-ray energy over a broad range, high spectral density, small relative energy bandwidth, high degree of linear polarization, and high peak brilliance [2]
Using the gamma radiation beam with unique characteristics at ELI-NP, we will be able to respond to the need of Nuclear Astrophysics to perform accurate measurements of small cross sections of nuclear reactions of the hydrogen and helium burning processes and of the astrophysical S-factor that are essential for stellar evolution modeling
Measuring capture reactions by means of the inverse photodisintegration reaction, besides being inherently low-background measurements, have the advantage of having a different systematic uncertainty than those of characteristic charged particle induced reactions measured at low energies of astrophysical interest

Summary

The ELI-NP facility

High brightness relativistic electron bunches and able to provide gamma beams with unprecedented features: continuous tuneable gamma-ray energy over a broad range (from 200 keV to 19.5MeV), high spectral density (about 104 photons/s/eV), small relative energy bandwidth (lower than 0.5%), high degree of linear polarization (higher than 95%), and high peak brilliance [2]. Such a facility will open new experimental perspectives for studies in the field of photonuclear physics. Thanks to these excellent features, the ELI-NP facility will provides unique opportunities for nuclear astrophysics research

Nuclear Astrophysics at ELI-NP

The ELISSA detector

Findings

Tests on ELISSA prototype