A laser application to nuclear astrophysics

In the last decade, the availability in high-intensity laser beams capable of producing plasmas with ion energies large enough to induce nuclear reactions has opened new research paths in nuclear physics. We studied the reactions 3He(d, p)4He and d(d,n)3He at temperatures of few keV in a plasma, generated by the interaction of intense ultrafast laser pulses with molecular deuterium or deuterated-methane clusters mixed with 3He atoms. The yield of 14.7 MeV protons from the 3He(d, p)4He reaction was used to extract the astrophysical S factor. Results of the experiment performed at the Center for High Energy Density Science at The University of Texas at Austin will be presented.