Astrophysical implications from C12 + C12 deep sub barrier fusion

Fusion reactions with light nuclei play an essential role in understanding the energy production, the nucleosynthesis of chemical elements and the evolution of massive stars, in particular in their late stages.

These reactions feed the stars throughout their lives while producing all the chemical elements that surround us, including those necessary for life as we know it to occur, such as carbon or oxygen

The measurement of key fusion reactions at stellar energies is thus of high interest, but highly challenging since the associated cross sections are extremely small, of the sub-nanobarn range. Among these reactions, the fusion of carbon nuclei, which drives the stellar carbon burning phase, is deeply connected with essential microscopic featuresof nuclei such as the impact of symmetries, the access to quantum states, the onset of resonances or Pauli repulsion effects. These may manifest themselves in exceptional behaviour of the S-factor of the 12C+12C system, which may affect any extrapolation towards low energies.



The present talk will discuss recent experimental results on the measurement of the carbon + carbon fusion reaction down to the astrophysics region.



The interplay between nuclear structure, nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution will be addressed.