Nuclear Theory·nucl-th

Friday·July 14, 2023

11 papers—9 primary·2 cross-listed

10
[Submitted on 12 Jul 2023] (cross-list from physics.plasm-ph)
Photon and neutron production as in-situ diagnostics of proton-boron fusion
B. M. Hegelich · L. Labun · O. Z. Labun · T. A. Mehlhorn
Short-pulse, ultra high-intensity lasers have opened new regimes for studying fusion plasmas and creating novel ultra-short ion beams and neutron sources. Diagnosing the plasma in these experiments is important for optimizing the fusion yield but difficult due to the picosecond time scales, 10s of micron-cubed volumes and high densities. We propose to use the yields of photons and neutrons produced by parallel reactions involving the same reactants to diagnose the plasma conditions and predict the yields of specific reactions of interest. In this work, we focus on verifying the yield of the high-interest aneutronic proton-boron fusion reaction $^{11} B (p, 2 α)^{4} H e$ , which is difficult to measure directly due to the short stopping range of the produced $α$ s in most materials. We identify promising photon-producing reactions for this purpose and compute the ratios of the photon yield to the $α$ yield as a function of plasma parameters. In beam fusion experiments, the $^{11} C$ yield is an easily-measurable observable to verify the $α$ yield. In light of our results, improving and extending measurements of the cross sections for these parallel reactions are important steps to gaining greater control over these laser-driven fusion plasmas.
Comments:
23 pages, 7 figures, revtex format
Subjects:
Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph); Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
arXiv:
2307.06427 [pdf]
Laser Part.Beams(2022)·0 citations
11
[Submitted on 13 Jul 2023] (cross-list from astro-ph.HE)
Current status and desired accuracy of the isotopic production cross-sections relevant to astrophysics of cosmic rays II. Fluorine to Silicon (and updated LiBeB)
Yoann Génolini🇫🇷 · David Maurin🇫🇷 · Igor V. Moskalenko🇺🇸 · Michael Unger🇩🇪
High-precision cosmic-ray data from ongoing and recent past experiments (Voyager, ACE-CRIS, PAMELA, ATIC, CREAM, NUCLEON, AMS-02, CALET, DAMPE) are being released in the tens of MeV/n to multi-TeV/n energy range. Astrophysical and dark matter interpretations of these data are limited by the precision of nuclear production cross-sections. In Paper I, PRC 98, 034611 (2018), we set up a procedure to rank nuclear reactions whose desired measurements will enable us to fully exploit currently available data on CR Li to N ( $Z = 3 - 7$ ) species. Here we extend these rankings to O up to Si nuclei ( $Z = 8 - 14$ ), also updating our results on the LiBeB species. We also highlight how comprehensive new high precision nuclear data, that could e.g. be obtained at the SPS at CERN, would be a game-changer for the determination of key astrophysical quantities (diffusion coefficient, halo size of the Galaxy) and indirect searches for dark matter signatures.
Comments:
38 pages (18p main text + 20p App.), 17 figures, 16 tables (all f_abc coeffs available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8143305), Supplementary Material (55 pages) in the source files
Subjects:
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); High Energy Physics — Experiment (hep-ex); Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex); Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
arXiv:
2307.06798 [pdf]
PRC(2024)·19 citations

Affiliations

first authorsco-authorsvia INSPIRE

Photon and neutron production as in-situ diagnostics of proton-boron fusion

Current status and desired accuracy of the isotopic production cross-sections relevant to astrophysics of cosmic rays II. Fluorine to Silicon (and updated LiBeB)

Affiliations