Towards solar measurements of nuclear reaction rates

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nuclear reaction rates are a fundamental yet uncertain ingredient in stellar evolution models. The astrophysical S-factor pertaining to the initial reaction in the proton–proton (pp) chain is uncertain at the 1 per cent level, which contributes a systematic but generally unpropagated error of similar order in the theoretical ages of stars. In this work, we study the prospect of improving the measurement of this and other reaction rates in the pp chain and CNO cycle using helioseismology and solar neutrinos. We show that when other aspects of the solar model are improved, then it shall be possible using current solar data to improve the precision of this measurement by nearly an order of magnitude and hence the corresponding uncertainty on the ages of low-mass stars by a similar amount.