The beta-delayed proton and gamma decay of 27P for nuclear astrophysics

Abstract

The creation site of 26Al is still under debate. It is thought to be produced in hydrogen burning and in explosive helium burning in novae and supernovae, and possibly also in the H-burning in outer shells of red giant stars. Also, the reactions for its creation or destruction are not completely known. When 26Al is created in novae, the reaction chain is: 24Mg(p, γ) 25Al(β +ν) 25Mg(p, γ) 26Al, but this chain can be by-passed by another chain, 25Al(p, γ) 26Si(p, γ) 27P and it can also be destroyed directly. The reaction 26mAl(p, γ) 27Si∗ is another avenue to bypass the production of 26Al and it is dominated by resonant capture. We find and study these resonances by an indirect method, through the beta-decay of 27P. A clean and abundant source of 27P was produced for the first time and separated with MARS. A new implantation-decay station which allows increased efficiency for low energy protons and for high-energy gamma-rays was used. We measured gamma-rays and beta-delayed protons emitted from states above the proton threshold in the daughter nucleus 27Si to identify and characterize the resonances. The lifetime of 27P was also measured with accuracy under 2%.