Direct capture astrophysical S factors at low energy

Abstract

We investigate the energy dependence of the astrophysical S factors for the reactions 7Be(p,gamma)8B, the primary source of high-energy solar neutrinos in the solar pp chain, and 16O(p,gamma)17F, an important reaction in the CNO cycle. Both of these reactions have predicted S factors which rise at low energies; we find the source of this behavior to be a pole in the S factor at a center-of-mass energy E = -E_B, the point where the energy of the emitted photon vanishes. The pole arises from a divergence of the radial integrals.

Comments: 8 pages including 2 figures