Nuclear Astrophysics

Within the project area "Nuclear Astrophysics" our research group deals with the synthesis of elements in different burning stages (including explosive end phases) of stars. We concentrate on the research of the production of heavy proton rich nuclei. The models for nucleosynthesis ask for reliable and robust parameters from nuclear physics, especially alpha- und proton-optical potentials, gamma strength functions and level densities. The knowledge about these paramters in heavy nuclei is rather limited. In our experiments we try to find universal models for these parameters. For this purpose we do:
  • Proton- and alpha-capture reactions using activation and in-beam methods at the Tandem accelerator of the University of Cologne (UoC), at PTB Braunschweig, at RUBION of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

  • Preparation of experiments for Nuclear Astrophysics at the new Accelerator Mass Spectrometer of the University of Cologne.

  • Network calculation in statistical models.

The projects are supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (ZI 510/7-1, INST 216/544-1) and the University of Cologne.