Recent progress in ab-initio studies of nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest with A ≤ 3

Laura E Marcucci

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/981/1/012019

Abstract

We review the most recent theoretical studies of nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest involving few-nucleon systems. In particular, we focus on the consequences for the solar neutrino fluxes of the recent determination for the astrophysical S-factor of the proton weak capture by proton, and on the radiative capture of protons by deuterons in the energy range of interest for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.

Highlights

The weak proton capture on protons, i.e., the reaction p + p → d + e+ + νe, is the most fundamental process in stellar nucleosynthesis: it is the first reaction in the pp chain, which converts hydrogen into helium in main sequence stars like the Sun
This reaction is of interest for the theory of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), since it is the main process through which deuterons are destroyed, and it strongly affects the primordial deuterium abundance
The results for the pp astrophysical S-factor can be summarized as follows: (i) the zero-energy S-factor S(0) obtained retaining all the L ≤ 1 partial waves and the full one- plus two-body weak current contributions is S(0) = (4.030 ± 0.006) × 10−23 MeV fm2, where the theoretical uncertainty is due to the fitting procedure

Summary

Introduction

The weak proton capture on protons, i.e., the reaction p + p → d + e+ + νe (hereafter labelled pp), is the most fundamental process in stellar nucleosynthesis: it is the first reaction in the pp chain, which converts hydrogen into helium in main sequence stars like the Sun. Being the only possible reaction after the initial step, it has no interest for the solar neutrino fluxes This reaction is of interest for the theory of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), since it is the main process through which deuterons are destroyed, and it strongly affects the primordial deuterium abundance. A first attempt to estimate the theoretical uncertainty was performed, basically varying consistently in the nuclear Hamiltonian and nuclear currents the Λ cutoff, present in the regularization momentum-cutoff function needed to take care of the power-law behavior for large momenta of potentials and currents It should be noticed, though, that some inconsistencies in the study of Ref.

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Results

Conclusion