Description
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Light nuclei were created during big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). Standard BBN theory, using rates inferred from accelerator-beam data, cannot explain high levels of Li6 in low-metallicity stars. Using high-energy-density plasmas we measure the T(He3,?)Li6 reaction rate, a candidate for anomalously high Li6 production; we find that the rate is too low to explain the observations, and different than values used in common BBN models. This is the first data directly relevant to BBN, and also the first use of laboratory plasmas, at comparable conditions to astrophysical systems, to address a problem in nuclear astrophysics.
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Notes
| PSFC REPORT PSFC/JA-16-46
This work was supported in part by the U.S. DOE (Grants No. DE-NA0001857, No. DE-FC52-08NA28752, No. DEFG02-88ER40387, No. DE-NA0001837, No. DE-AC52-06NA25396), LLNL (No. B597367), LLE (No. 415935-G), the Fusion Science Center at the University of Rochester (No. 524431), and the National Laser Users Facility (No. DE-NA0002035). A. B. Z. acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 1122374, and gratefully acknowledges the support provided for this work by the LaboratoryDirected Research and Development (LDRD) program, Project No. 20150717PRD2, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. |