LUNA: 30 Years of Nuclear Astrophysics Underground

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• Marialuisa Aliotta - U. Edinburgh
• Wednesday 30 March 2022, 16:00-17:00
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If you have a question about this talk, please contact Amaury Triaud.

Except for primordial hydrogen, helium and few other light species, all chemical elements in the universe originate from nuclear reactions occurring in both quiescent and explosive stages of stellar evolution. These reactions take place over a narrow energy region, typically well below the Coulomb barrier between the interacting nuclei. As a result, their reaction cross sections are vanishingly small and difficult to measure at surface laboratories. In many cases, significant breakthroughs can be achieved underground, where the cosmic-ray induced background can be reduced by several orders of magnitude.

The Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) of the INFN at Gran Sasso (Italy), the first of its kind worldwide, has allowed for pioneering nuclear reaction studies at the lowest energy frontiers for almost 30 years now. Experimental studies of hydrogen burning reactions have led to major improvements in our understanding of nucleosynthesis processes in various environments, from the Big Bang to our Sun, to Asymptotic Giant Branch stars and classical novae. In this talk, I will review some of the most recent results and present future perspectives both at LUNA and elsewhere.

This talk is part of the Physics and Astronomy Colloquia series.

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