Indirect study of the reaction ⁷Be (α,γ)¹¹C

The production of carbon-12 occurs naturally in low metallicity stars through the so-called Hot P-P chain. This process is described by the chain ⁷Be(α,γ)¹¹C(p,γ)¹²N(β,v)¹²C. However, the reaction rates for this process remain uncertain. In particular, the first reaction of the chain has significant uncertainties at the lowest energies due to the presence of the subthreshold resonance in ¹¹C (3/2+ state at 7.5 MeV) which dominates the α-capture at energies below a few hundred keV. One way to constrain this reaction rate is to apply an indirect method and populate the subthreshold state in ¹¹C using the ⁷Be(⁶Li,d)¹¹C α-transfer reaction. We developed a new high-efficiency experimental setup that allows low-energy measurements of the α-transfer reactions to sub-threshold states. The cross-section for the α-transfer reaction measured this way will then be used to determine the α-asymptotic normalization coefficient of the 3/2+ state at 7.5 MeV in ¹¹C, constraining the ⁷Be(⁶Li, d)¹¹C reaction cross section at the lowest energies. However, the dependance of this process in optical model potentials and the small cross sections of the reaction represent a challenge for this experiment. The presented project discusses the Monte Carlo simulations implemented to evaluate the feasibility of this techique.