Editorial: Physics, Honesty, and Cooperation

Measurement and analysis of nuclear γ -ray production cross sections in proton interactions with Mg, Si, and Fe nuclei abundant in astrophysical sites over the incident energy range E=30–66 MeV

“…Below, we discuss the obtained γ -ray production cross section results, concentrating on the main γ rays following the decay of the ground-state (g.s.) bands of 56 Fe, 28 Si, and 24 Mg isotopes.…”

“…The detection of γ rays was made by means of the AFRODITE array [28][29][30] that consisted of eight Compton suppressed clover detectors [31] of the EUROGAM phase II type. The clovers were placed in a fixed geometry with four detectors at 90 • and four at 135 • relative to the incident beam direction.…”

“…The broad component of γ -ray emission spectra from SFs results from the interactions of accelerated heavy ions on hydrogen and helium nuclei and is subject to large Doppler effects, making its analysis rather complicated. In contrast, the narrow γ -ray line component, primarily generated in nuclear reactions induced by accelerated protons and α particles on abundant heavier nuclei ( 12 C, 14 N, 16 O, 20 Ne, 24 Mg, 28 Si and 56 Fe), is less affected by Doppler line shifts and broadenings. A thorough analysis of the intensities and shapes of γ -ray lines [4] might reveal the properties of particle distributions that are related to the particle acceleration mechanism and to the magnetohydrodynamic structure of the astrophysical, ambient medium [5,6].…”

“…Among the strongest γ -ray lines are the line at 4439 keV from the decay of the 2 + first excited state of 12 C, the line at E γ = 6129 keV emitted by the 3 − second excited state of 16 O, and the lines of 14 N, 20 Ne, 24 Mg, 28 Si and 56 Fe at energies of E γ = 1635, 1634, 1369, 1779 and 847 keV, respectively. All these strong, main γ -ray lines are emitted in transitions from the first excited states of abundant nuclei, while weaker lines result from the deexcitation of higher-lying nuclear states.…”

“…However, the agreements between the calculated γ -ray line production cross sections and corresponding experimental data can be appreciably improved by using in TALYS modified nuclear level deformation parameters instead of the built-in default ones, as shown in Refs. [18,19], e.g., for the 14 N, 22 Ne, or 28 Si nuclei. Furthermore, these calculations revealed the presence of large structures at higher particle energies where no experimental data are available.…”