The Study of the 6Li(p,γ)7Be Reaction at LUNA

Abstract

Abstract The 6Li(p,γ)7Be reaction is mainly involved in two astrophysical scenarios: the primordial nucleosynthesis and 6Li consumption in pre-main and main sequence stars. A recent measurement of 6Li(p,γ)7Be reaction S-factor reported a resonance-like structure at Ecm = 195 keV, which has not been confirmed neither by other direct measurements nor by theoretical calculations. A new experiment was performed at the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA). The extremely low background environment allowed to measure the 6Li(p,γ)7Be cross section down to low energies with unprecedented sensitivity leading to clarify the existence of the claimed resonance. Details on the experimental setup and the preliminary results of the ongoing analysis are reported in this work.