https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-020-00052-9
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Study of the 
Mg(d,p)
Mg reaction to constrain the Al(p,
)Si resonant reaction rates in nova burning conditions
1
School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, James Clerk Maxwell Building, Edinburgh, EH9 3FD, UK
2
Department of Physics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA
3
Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27710, USA
4
Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, 60439, USA
5
Present address: European X-ray Free Electron Laser GmbH, Holzkoppel, 22869, Schenefeld, Germany
* e-mail: conor.hamill@ed.ac.uk
Received:
23
October
2019
Accepted:
26
December
2019
Published online:
5
February
2020
The rate of the 
Al(p, 
)
Si reaction is one of the few key remaining nuclear uncertainties required for predicting the production of the cosmic -ray emitter Al in explosive burning in novae. This reaction rate is dominated by three key resonances (
, 
and 
) in Si. Only the resonance strength has been directly constrained by experiment. A high resolution measurement of the Mg(d, p) reaction was used to determine spectroscopic factors for analog states in the mirror nucleus, Mg. A first spectroscopic factor value is reported for the 
state at 6.256 MeV, and a strict upper limit is set on the value for the state at 5.691 MeV, that is incompatible with an earlier (
He, 
He) study. These results are used to estimate proton partial widths, and resonance strengths of analog states in Si contributing to the Al(p, )Si reaction rate in nova burning conditions.
© The Author(s), 2020
