We report the first (in)elastic scattering measurement of 25 Al + p with the capability to select and measure in a broad energy range the proton resonances in 26 Si contributing to the 22 Mg(α, p) reaction at type I x-ray burst energies. We measured spin-parities of four resonances above the α threshold of 26 Si that are found to strongly impact the 22 Mg(α, p) rate. The new rate advances a state-ofthe-art model to remarkably reproduce lightcurves of the GS 1826-24 clocked burster with mean deviation <9% and permits us to discover a strong correlation between the He abundance in the accreting envelope of photospheric radius expansion burster and the dominance of 22 Mg(α, p) branch.

The largest, at the moment, statistics of 7 × 10 6 η → 3π 0 decays, based on 6.2 × 10 7 η mesons produced in the γp → ηp reaction, has been accumulated by the A2 Collaboration at the Mainz Microtron, MAMI. It allowed a detailed study of the η → 3π 0 dynamics beyond its conventional parametrization with just the quadratic slope parameter α and enabled, for the first time, a measurement of the second-order term and a better understanding of the cusp structure in the neutral decay. The present data are also compared to recent theoretical calculations that predict a nonlinear dependence along the quadratic distance from the Dalitz-plot center. =-0.0318+/-0.0015) α PDG ( FIG. 2: Comparison of the experimental data [9][10][11][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] (plotted by black points), which were used in the RPP [23] to obtain the averaged value (shown by the vertical lines) for the η → 3π 0 quadratic slope parameter α, to each other and to various calculations [2-4, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 31] (colored points). Ref. [2] gives the magnitude of α for the analysis made in Ref.[1], in which its value was not given.

Type I X-ray bursts (XRBs) are the most frequently observed thermonuclear explosions in nature. The 22Mg(α,p)25Al reaction plays a critical role in XRB models. However, experimental information is insufficient to deduce a precise 22Mg(α,p)25Al reaction rate for the respective XRB temperature range. A new measurement of 25Al+p resonant scattring was performed up to the astrophysically interested energy region of 22Mg(α,p)25Al. Several resonances were observed in the excitation functions, and their level properties have been determined based on an R-matrix analysis. In particular, proton widths and spin-parities of four natural-parity resonances above the α threshold of 26Si, which can contribute the reaction rate of 22Mg(α,p)25Al, were first experimentally determined.

The rate of the 25 Al(p, γ) 26 Si reaction is one of the few key remaining nuclear uncertainties required for predicting the production of the cosmic γ-ray emitter 26 Al in explosive burning in novae. This reaction rate is dominated by three key resonances (J π = 0 + , 1 + and 3 + ) in 26 Si. Only the 3 + resonance strength has been directly constrained by experiment. A high resolution measurement of the 25 Mg(d, p) reaction was used to determine spectroscopic factors for analog states in the mirror nucleus, 26 Mg. A first spectroscopic factor value is reported for the 0 + state at 6.256 MeV, and a strict upper limit is set on the value for the 1 + state at 5.691 MeV, that is incompatible with an earlier ( 4 He, 3 He) study. These results are used to estimate proton partial widths, and resonance strengths of analog states in 26 Si contributing to the 25 Al(p, γ) 26 Si reaction rate in nova burning conditions.

Article:Sokhoyan, V., Prakhov, S., Fix, A. et The data available from the A2 Collaboration at MAMI were analyzed to select the γp → π 0 ηp reaction on an event-by-event basis, which allows for partial-wave analyses of three-body final states to obtain more reliable results, compared to fits to measured distributions. These data provide the world's best statistical accuracy in the energy range from threshold to E γ = 1.45 GeV, allowing a finer energy binning in the measurement of all observables needed for understanding the reaction dynamics. The results obtained for the measured observables are compared to existing models, and the impact from the new data is checked by the fit with the revised Mainz model.