Shell model study on the astrophysical neutron capture of 8Li

Abstract

The astrophysical important neutron capture of 8Li is investigated by combining the shell model and potential model. Three effective interactions, SFO, PSDMK2 and PSDWBP are used to calculate the spectroscopic factors and reaction widths. For the resonant capture from 8Li to the first continuum state of 9Li , the three effective interactions give similar neutron partial widths, and they are well compared with the experimental results. However, the calculated photon widths are over 5 times less than the previous estimate. This will make the substantial difference that, at high temperature, the direct capture mechanism still dominates. The calculated capture rates generally agree well with the experimental data. The uncertainty of calculated cross-sections and capture rates mainly results from the different prediction of spectroscopic factors for the three effective interactions. The total neutron capture rates in our calculations are less than 4300 cm3 mole−1 s−1 for T9 < 5 which confirms that the main reaction flow will proceed through the reaction 8Li (α, n) 11B in the stellar environments.