Speaker
Description
For more than three decades, it has been known that studying astrophysically relevant nuclear reactions between stable nuclei requires high-intensity and high-resolution beams and extremely low-background environments, achievable only in underground accelerator laboratories. By suppressing cosmic ray–induced events by several orders of magnitude, these facilities enable direct measurements of reaction cross sections at or near the energies where they occur inside stars. Such measurements provide crucial insights into the processes that govern stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis. Following the pioneering work of LUNA at Gran Sasso, Italy, a new generation of underground accelerators is extending this approach toward higher energies and greater experimental versatility. Among them, the Felsenkeller laboratory in Dresden combines a 5 MV accelerator with a low-background environment and state of the art detection systems, offering unique opportunities to explore the fusion processes that power the stars. This talk will provide a general overview of underground nuclear astrophysics and present recent results from the LUNA and Felsenkeller laboratories.
