Radiative capture of proton through the 14N(p,γ)15O reaction at low energy

Abstract

The CNO cycle is the main source of energy in stars more massive than our Sun. This process defines the energy production, the duration of which can be used to determine the lifetime of massive stars. The cycle is an important tool for determining the age of globular clusters. Radiative proton capture via , at energies of astrophysical interest, is an important process in the CNO cycle. In this project, we apply a potential model to describe both non-resonant and resonant reactions in the channels where radiative capture occurs through electric transitions. We employed the R-matrix method to describe the ongoing reactions via resonant transitions, when it was not possible to correctly reproduce the experimental data using the potential model. The partial components of the astrophysical S-factor are calculated for all possible electric and magnetic dipole transitions in 15O. The linear extrapolated S-factor at zero energy (S(0)) agrees well with earlier reported values for all transition types considered in this work. Based on the value of the total astrophysical S-factor, depending on the collision energy, we calculate the nuclear reaction rates for . The computed rates agree well with the results reported in the NACRE II Collaboration and most recent existing measurements.