Limits on the direct capture component of the ²³Na(p, γ)²⁴Mg reaction

The ²³Na(p,γ)²⁴Mg reaction plays an important role in the nucleosynthesis of elements in the hot bottom

burning environment of asymptotic giant branch stars by providing a breakout path from the NeNa to the

MgAl cycle. At temperatures above ≈0.1 GK, the underlying nuclear reaction contributions to the rate

are primarily narrow resonances, but at lower temperatures direct and broad resonance tail contributions

come to dominate. While there have been recent studies to improve the uncertainties of the contributions

of these narrow resonances, little attention has been paid to the non-resonant component of the capture

cross section. In this work, experimental measurements are reported over the energy range from 0.5

and 1.05 MeV proton beam energy. Several transitions were measured where two broad resonances were

clearly observed whose low energy tails contribute strongly to the low-energy, non-resonant, cross section.

In addition, direct capture in the²³Na(p,γ)²⁴Mg reaction was observed for the first time.