It's Wrong But How Wrong? Studying The Effects of Assumptions About Cross Sections in Experiments and Theory.

To understand stellar nuclear reactions, we need to know the likelihood of interaction for different colliding systems at different energies in MeV. Experiments are conducted to recreate these reactions and for many important reactions, one of the reactants is unstable and the beam intensity which can be provided for these cases is often too low to measure the cross sections of interest. One approach often used is to measure at higher energies where the cross section is higher and to use statistical models to extrapolate the important energies. However, these statistical models make a number of approximations, most importantly they often do not include resonance behavior which are observed in many experiments and many modern experiments using gas targets have poor energy resolution and do not observe the strong resonance structures which can exist. The purpose of this project is to investigate what systematic uncertainties result from these experimental and theoretical assumptions. To do this, a program is being built using C++ and Python to simulate these reactions numerically with and without the model assumptions, allowing us to make the comparisons necessary to estimate the extent of the systematic uncertainty.