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Solar neutrinos and LUNA
Daniel Bemmerer (Forschungszentrum Dresden, Rossendorf)
Seminar Room 3, 15:00
Nuclear reactions that generate energy and synthesize elements take place
inside the stars in a relatively narrow energy window: the Gamow peak.
The extremely low value of the cross-section inside the Gamow peak has always
prevented its measurement in a laboratory at the Earth's surface, where the
signal to background ratio is too small because of cosmic ray interactions.
In order to explore this new domain of nuclear astrophysics LUNA
(Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics) started in 1991 its activity
by installing a 50 kV electrostatic accelerator underground at the Gran Sasso
Laboratory in central Italy, followed in the year 2000 by a 400 kV one.
LUNA still remains the only underground accelerator facility existing
in the world. In the seminar I will describe the main contributions given
by LUNA to the study of the pp-chain and the CNO cycle in the Sun,
in particular to the precise determination of the solar neutrino spectrum.
