Eur. Phys. J. A (2014) 50: 147
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2014-14147-1

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

A new study of ²⁵Mg ²⁸Si angular distributions at MeV

¹ INFN Sezione di Padova, Padova, Italy
² INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, Legnaro (Padova), Italy
³ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy
⁴ INFN Sezione di Milano, Milano, Italy
⁵ Nevsehir Haci Bektas University, Science and Art Faculty, Physics Department, Nevsehir, Turkey

^* e-mail: caciolli@pd.infn.it

Received: 27 June 2014
Accepted: 2 September 2014
Published online: 24 September 2014

Abstract

The observation of ²⁶Al gives us the proof of active nucleosynthesis in the Milky Way. However the identification of the main producers of ²⁶Al is still a matter of debate. Many sites have been proposed, but our poor knowledge of the nuclear processes involved introduces high uncertainties. In particular, the limited accuracy on the ²⁵Mg ²⁸Si reaction cross section has been identified as the main source of nuclear uncertainty in the production of ²⁶Al in C/Ne explosive burning in massive stars, which has been suggested to be the main source of ²⁶Al in the Galaxy. We studied this reaction through neutron spectroscopy at the CN Van de Graaff accelerator of the Legnaro National Laboratories. Thanks to this technique we are able to discriminate the events from possible contamination arising from parasitic reactions. In particular, we measured the neutron angular distributions at 5 different beam energies (between 3 and 5 MeV) in the - laboratory system angular range. The presented results disagree with the assumptions introduced in the analysis of a previous experiment.