Branching Ratios for the Nitrogen 14 Proton Gamma Reaction (2015)

Undergraduate: Christopher Folmar

Faculty Advisor: Art Champagne
Department: Physics & Astronomy

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The Nitrogen 14 proton gamma reaction is an integral part of the CNO cycle in main sequence stars. Using monte carlo simulations of the accelerator and detector at The Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics (LENA), we hope to better characterize the the low energy spectrum of the 14N(p,g)180 reaction. This begins with simulating reactions at the 284keV resonance,for which data as already been collected, and creating efficiency curves for the simulation. We will then use the simulated data to better calculate the branching ratios for the reaction. This is accomplished by simulating each reaction branch, and fitting these simulated spectrum to the experimental data. As the low energy reactions that occur in a star occupy time scales that are far too long to simulate in the lab, better constraining the mid energy spectrum will lead to a better extrapolation to stellar energies.