The relevant gamma energy range is explicitly identified where additional gamma$ strength has to be located for having an impact on astrophysically relevant reactions. It is shown that folding the energy dependences of the transmission coefficients and the level density leads to maximal contributions for gamma energies of 2<=E_gamma<=4 MeV unless quantum selection rules allow isolated states to contribute. Under this condition, electric dipole transitions dominate. These findings allow to more accurately judge the relevance of modifications of the γstrength for astrophysics.
The relevance of storage-ring electron-ion recombination experiments for astrophysics is outlined. In particular, the role of low-energy dielectronic-recombination resonances is discussed. A bibliographic compilation of electron-ion recombination measurements with cosmically abundant ions is provided.
We derive the SZ effect arising in radio-galaxy lobes that are filled with high-energy, non-thermal electrons. We provide here quantitative estimates for SZ effect expected from the radio galaxy lobes by normalizing it to the Inverse-Compton light, observed in the X-ray band, as produced by the extrapolation to low energies of the radio emitting electron spectrum in these radio lobes. We compute the spectral and spatial characteristics of the SZ effect associated to the radio lobes of two distant radio galaxies (3C294 and 3C432) recently observed by Chandra, and we further discuss its detectab…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to assess the screening effects by bound target electrons in low energy nuclear reactions in laboratories. Quantum effects corresponding to the Pauli and Heisenberg principle are enforced by constraints. We show that the enhancement of the average cross section and of its variance is due to the perturbations induced by the electrons.This gives a correlation between the maximum amplitudes of the inter-nuclear oscillational motion and the enhancement factor. It suggests that the chaotic behavior of the electronic motion affects the magnitude of the enhan…
Nuclear reaction rates of astrophysical applications are traditionally determined on the basis of Hauser-Feshbach reaction codes. These codes adopt a number of approximations that have never been tested, such as a simplified width fluctuation correction, the neglect of delayed or multiple-particle emission during the electromagnetic decay cascade, or the absence of the pre-equilibrium contribution at increasing incident energies. The reaction code TALYS has been recently updated to estimate the Maxwellian-averaged reaction rates that are of astrophysical relevance. These new developments enabl…
We investigate the energy dependence of the astrophysical $S$ factor for the reaction $^7$Be$(p,γ)^8$B, the primary source of high-energy solar neutrinos in the solar $pp$ chain. Using simple models we explore the model dependence in the extrapolation of the experimental data to the region of astrophysical interest near 20 keV. We find that below approximately 400 keV the energy dependence is very well understood and constrained by the data for the elastic scattering of low energy neutrons from $^7$Li. Above 400 keV nuclear distortion of the wave function of the incident proton introduces a si…
The cross sections for the elastic scattering reactions {112,124}Sn(a,a){112,124}Sn at energies above and below the Coulomb barrier are presented and compared to predictions for global alpha-nucleus potentials. The high precision of the new data allows a study of the global alpha-nucleus potentials at both the proton and neutron-rich sides of an isotopic chain. In addition, local alpha-nucleus potentials have been extracted for both nuclei, and used to reproduce elastic scattering data at higher energies. Predictions from the capture cross section of the reaction 112Sn(a,g)116Te at astrophysic…
I show that off-shell effects, like antisymmetrization and Be-7 distortions, can significantly influence the energy dependence of the nonresonant Be7(p,gamma)B8 astrophysical S factor at higher energies. The proper treatment of these effects results in a vitrually flat E1 component of the S factor at E_cm = 0.3-1.5 MeV energies in the present eight-body model. The energy dependence of the nonresonant S factor, predicted by the present model, is in agreement with the low-energy direct capture data and the existing high-energy Coulomb dissociation data. Irrespective of whether or not the present…
Of all the fundamental parameters of the Sun (diameter, mass, temperature...), the gravitational multipole moments (of degree l and order m) that determine the solar moments of inertia, are still poorly known. However, at the first order (l=2), the quadrupole moment is relevant to many astrophysical applications. It indeed contributes to the relativistic perihelion advance of planets, together with the post-Newtonian (PN) parameters; or to the precession of the orbital plane about the Sun polar axis, the latter being unaffected by the purely relativistic PN contribution. Hence, a precise knowl…
The elastic scattering cross section of$^{92}$Mo($α$,$α$)$^{92}$Mo has been measured at energies of $E_{\rm{c.m.}} \approx$ 13, 16, and 19 MeV in a wide angular range. The real and imaginary parts of the optical potential for the system $^{92}$Mo - $α$ have been derived at energies around and below the Coulomb barrier. The result fits into the systematic behavior of $α$-nucleus folding potentials. The astrophysically relevant $^{96}$Ru($γ$,$α$)$^{92}$Mo reaction rates at $T_9=2.0$ and $T_9=3.0$ could be determined to an accuracy of about 16 % and are compared to previously published theoretica…
Nucleosynthesis processes involve reactions on several thousand nuclei, both close to and far off stability. The preparation of reaction rates to be used in astrophysical investigations requires experimental and theoretical input. In this context, two interesting aspects are discussed: (i) the relevant gamma transition energies in astrophysical capture reactions, and (ii) the newly discovered Coulomb suppression of the stellar enhancement factor. The latter makes a number of reactions with negative Q value more favorable for experimental investigation than their inverse reactions, contrary to …
The reactions $^{10}$B(p,$α$)$^{7}$Be and $^{11}$B(p,$α$)$^{8}$Be are studied at thermonuclear energies using DWBA calculations. For both reactions, transitions to the ground states and first excited states are investigated. In the case of $^{10}$B(p,$α$)$^{7}$Be, a resonance at $E_{Res}=10$ keV can be consistently described in the potential model, thereby allowing the extension of the astrophysical $S$-factor data to very low energies. Strong interference with a resonance at about $E_{Res}=550$ keV require a Breit-Wigner description of that resonance and the introduction of an interference te…
Earth absorbs $\nue$ and $\numu$ of energies above about 100 TeV. As is well-known, although $\nutau$ will also disappear through charged-current interactions, the $\nutau$ flux will be regenerated by prompt tau decays. We show that this process also produces relatively large fluxes of secondary $\nube$ and $\nubmu$, greatly enhancing the detectability of the initial $\nutau$. This is particularly important because at these energies $\nutau$ is a significant fraction of the expected astrophysical neutrino flux, and only a tiny portion of the atmospheric neutrino flux.
This review describes telescopes designed to study neutrinos from astrophysical sources. These sources include the Sun and Supernovae emitting neutrino energies up to tens of MeV, atmospheric neutrino sources caused by cosmic ray interactions and other sources generating neutrino energies ranging up to $1\times 10^{20}$ eV. Measurements with these telescopes also provide information on neutrino properties including clear evidence for neutrino flavor change. Telescopes in operation in the past and present are described, along with plans for future instruments to expand this rapidly growing fiel…
Charm production gives rise to a flux of very high energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources with jets driven by central engines, such as gamma ray bursts or supernovae with jets. The neutrino flux from semi-leptonic decays of charmed mesons is subject to much less hadronic and radiative cooling than the conventional flux from pion and kaon decays and therefore has a dominant contribution at higher energies, of relevance to future ultrahigh energy neutrino experiments.
The renormalization group (RG) approach to cosmology is an efficient method to study the possible evolution of the cosmological parameters from the point of view of quantum field theory in curved space-time. In this work we continue our previous investigations of the RG method based on potential low-energy effects induced from physics at very high energy scales M_X near M_P. In the present instance we assume that both the Newton constant, G, and the cosmological term, Λ, can be functions of a scale parameter μ. It turns out that G(μ) evolves according to a logarithmic law which may lead to asy…
We present ground state photoionization cross sections of atoms and ions averaged over resonance structures for photoionization modeling of astrophysical sources. The detailed cross sections calculated in the close-coupling approximation using the R-matrix method, with resonances delineated at thousands of energies, are taken from the Opacity Project database TOPbase and the Iron Project, including new data for the low ionization stages of iron Fe I--V. The resonance-averaged cross sections are obtained by convolving the detailed cross sections with a Gaussian distribution over the autoionizin…
We investigate the spectrum of photohadronically produced neutrinos at very high energies (VHE, >10^14 eV) in astrophysical sources whose physical properties are constrained by their variability, in particular jets in Active Galactic Nuclei (blazars) and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). We discuss in detail the various competing cooling processes for energetic protons, as well as the cooling of pions and muons in the hadronic cascade, which impose limits on both the efficiency of neutrino production and the maximum neutrino energy. If the proton acceleration process is of the Fermi type, we can derive…
Stellar energy loss arguments lead to strong constraints on the coupling $ϕγγ$ of a light axion-like particle to two photons. Helioscopes, like CAST, are able to put competitive bounds. The PVLAS experiment has recently observed a rotation of the polarization of a laser propagating in a magnetic field that can be interpreted as the effect of a quite strong $ϕγγ$ coupling. We present scenarios where the astrophysical and CAST bounds can be evaded, and we show that the PVLAS result can be accomodated in one of the models, provided the new physics scale is at very low energies.
