Classical novae are thermonuclear explosions in stellar binary systems, and important sources of 26Al and 22Na1-3. While γ rays from the decay of the former radioisotope have been observed through-out the Galaxy, 22Na remains untraceable. The half-life of 22Na (2.6 yr4) would allow the observation of its 1.275 MeV γ-ray line from a cosmic source. However, the prediction of such an observation requires good knowledge of the nuclear reactions involved in the production and destruction of this nucleus5. The 22Na(p, γ)23Mg5 reaction remains the only source of large uncertainty about the amount of 22Na ejected. Its rate is dominated by a single reso- nance on the short-lived state at 7785.0(7) keV in 23Mg6. In the present work, a combined analysis of particle-particle correlations and velocity-difference profiles is proposed to measure femtosecond nuclear lifetimes. The application of this novel method to the study of the 23Mg states, combining magnetic and highly-segmented tracking γ-ray spectrometers, places strong limits on the amount of 22Na produced in novae, explains its non-observation to date in γ rays (flux < 2.5×10−4 ph.cm−2s−1 7), and constrains its detectability with future space-borne observatories.
In this work we present the preliminary results of analysing the 46Mn β+ decay channel as a way to study the 45V(p, γ)46Cr reaction. 46Mn was selected among other species in the cocktail beam delivered by the LISE fragment separator at GANIL (Caen, France) in order to study its beta decay and the excited states of its daughter nucleus 46Cr. As part of the validation process we present the 46Mn half-life, the proton and gamma emission peaks related to the 46Mn decay and compare them with the results from previous works.
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