https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-025-01783-3
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
First sub-MeV nuclear reaction measurements in a heavy-ion storage ring
1
School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
2
GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, Germany
3
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Dresden, Germany
4
Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
5
Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy
6
HUN-REN ATOMKI Institute for Nuclear Research, Debrecen, Hungary
7
Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany
8
Helmholtz-Institut Jena, Jena, Germany
9
Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen, Germany
10
Institut für Kernphysik, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany
11
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Padova and INFN, Padova, Italy
12
Institut für Optik und Quantenelektronik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany
13
Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
14
Department of Physics, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan
15
Surrey University, Surrey, UK
16
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA
a
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b
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Received:
9
October
2025
Accepted:
26
December
2025
Published online:
19
January
2026
Abstract
Heavy-ion storage rings present a novel approach to studying nuclear reactions for astrophysics that have so far resisted traditional methods. In this paper, we report the first nuclear reactions studied in a ring at sub-MeV centre-of-mass energies. This is a major advance in nuclear reaction measurements at rings that lays the foundations for future investigations to address key problems in nuclear astrophysics affecting a wide range of stellar environments. We investigated the 
N(p,p)N and N(p,
)
C reactions in inverse kinematics from E = 1.125 MeV/u down to E = 426 keV/u, using the CARME array in the low-energy CRYRING@ESR heavy-ion storage ring, located at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research. Our (p,p) scattering results are in excellent agreement with theoretical R matrix predictions. We also report on a (p,) measurement at E = 426 keV/u, corresponding to E
= 403 keV, by far the lowest energy at which a nuclear reaction has ever been measured in a heavy-ion storage ring.
Communicated by Wolfram Korten.
Present address: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA
Present address: Surrey University, Surrey, UK
© The Author(s) 2026
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