First Stellar Nucleosynthesis Experiments Using ICF Plasmas

For the first time, Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) plasmas have been used to study a stellar nucleosynthesis reaction, ³He+³He, which is the final step of the PP-1 chain that burns H into He in main sequence stars. ICF plasmas span a wide range of densities and temperatures and include plasmas relevant to stellar cores. This type of study opens new areas of research into stellar nucleosynthesis and low-energy nuclear physics at conditions unattainable in conventional accelerator experiments, in the new field of plasma nuclear science. In this experiment we measured charged-particle spectra from the ³He(³He,2p)⁴He and ³He(³He,p)⁵Li reactions in thin-glass implosions at the OMEGA laser facility. The data agree with previous results on the reaction channel branching ratio and will be used to address the effects of final-state interactions between the fusion products. This work was supported in part by the U.S. DOE, LLNL and LLE.