Eur. Phys. J. A (2006) 27: 177-180
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2006-08-026-5

Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics II

Towards a high-precision measurement of the ³He(α,γ)⁷Be cross section at LUNA

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Genova and INFN Genova, Via dodecaneso 33 16146, Genova, Italy
² INFN, Padova, Italy
³ Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, INFN, Legnaro, Italy
⁴ Istituto di Fisica and INFN, Università di Milano, Milano, Italy
⁵ Centro de Fisica Nuclear da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
⁶ ATOMKI, Debrecen, Hungary
⁷ Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, INFN, Assergi, Italy
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica Sperimentale and INFN, Università di Torino, Torino, Italy
⁹ Osservatorio Astronomico di Collurania, Teramo, Italy
¹⁰ Università di Napoli and INFN, Napoli, Italy
¹¹ Institut für Experimentalphysik III, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
¹² Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Seconda Università di Napoli, Caserta, Italy

^* e-mail: costant@ge.infn.it

Received: 24 October 2005
Accepted: 20 December 2005
Published online: 7 March 2006

Abstract

The ³He(⁴He,γ)⁷Be reaction is the key process for the production of ⁷Be and ⁸B neutrinos in the Sun. We have designed a new experimental setup to study this reaction with high accuracy at low energies using two different experimental techniques. The first method consists in measuring the prompt capture gamma-ray transitions with an ultra-low background germanium detector heavily shielded and placed at close distance from a ³He windowless gas target. With another fully shielded large-volume germanium detector we will also measure the β-decay of the ⁷Be residual nuclei. The aim of the experiment is to reduce the error on the astrophysical factor S_{3, 4} to 4%.