Most low-energy light ion nuclear cross sections are so small they have never been directly measured -- this despite the fact that they are required elements in all stellar and big bang nucleosynthesis models! In
this talk I will describe our progress developing a technique to measure these cross sections using inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In ICF, high-power lasers compress and heat a capsule containing nuclear fuel to the point where thermonuclear reactions
can take place. By carefully doping these target capsules and trapping the reaction products after the laser shot, low-energy reactivities for a number of reactions might be measurable. For comparison, using an accelerator to produce the same number of reaction
products as could be produced in less than a nanosecond using ICF would take decades or even centuries of beam time. I plan to show ICF yield estimates for several possible target reactions, present some possible traps and detector concepts, then describe
the experiments we have already carried out to test these ideas.
The College of Arts