Testing a new low energy fusion concept with astrophysical implications

L. R. Gasques1,7, E. Brown2,7, A. Chieffi3, C.-L. Jiang4,7, C. Rolfs5, M. Wiescher6,7, D. G. Yakovlev8

1Department of Physics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
2Department of Physics & Astronomy, National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824
 3Istituto Nationale di Astrofisica, Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via Frascati 33, I-00040 Monteporzio Catone, Italy
4Argonne National Laboratory, Cass Road, Argonne, IL, USA
5Experimentalphysik III, Ruhr-Universit"at Bochum, Bochum, Germany
 6Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
 7The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics
 8Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, Politekhnicheskaya 26, 194021 St.-Petersburg, Russia

We investigate the consequences of a new phenomenological model of strongly reduced low-energy astrophysical S-factors for carbon and oxygen fusion reactions on stellar burning and nucleosynthesis. The new S-factor model drastically reduces the reaction rates in stellar matter at temperatures T <∼ (3-10)× 108 K, and especially at densities ρ >∼ 109 g cm-3. We show that these modifications change the abundances of many isotopes in massive late-type stars. Also, they significantly complicate carbon ignition (shift carbon ignition curves to higher T and ρ) in massive accreting white dwarfs exploding as type Ia supernovae and in accreting neutron stars producing superbursts. These astrophysical implications can be potentially used to confirm or reject the S-factor reduction hypothesis.

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