Program - Brookhaven National Laboratory

egions: the resolved resonances range and the continuum part. The resonance range has been extended
up to 2 MeV (previously 350 keV) and converted in the Reich-Moore R-Matrix approximation. Larson’s
total cross-section and the recent high-resolution inelastic cross-section measurements from IRMM were
used during the data assimilation. For the continuum region, a simultaneous analysis of different reaction
measurements (total, inelastic, charged particle, capture) has been performed with the ECIS/TALYS
codes, interfaced with CONRAD, and an overall good agreement has been achieved. The covariances
data have been produced with a Monte-Carlo marginalization procedure which consists in propagating all
experimental systematic uncertainties to the nuclear reaction model parameters. This 23 Na evaluation has
been successfully processed and tested on several neutronic benchmarks. It will be proposed for the future
JEFF-3.2 library.
Session OC Nuclear Astrophysics
Thursday March 7, 2013
Room: Empire East at 1:30 PM
OC 1 1:30 PM
Wanted! Nuclear Data for Dark Matter Astrophysics
Paolo Gondolo
University of Utah
The nature of cold dark matter is one of the big unsolved questions in physics. A wide spectrum of astronomical
observations from small galaxies to the largest scales can be consistently explained by the presence
of dark matter, in an amount equal on average to about five times the mass in ordinary matter. It is empirically
known that no known particle can be cold dark matter, and many theories exist for dark matter
as a new elementary particle. Numerous searches for dark matter particles are under way: from production
of new candidates in high-energy accelerators, to direct detection of dark matter-nucleus scattering
in underground observatories, to indirect detection of dark matter signals in cosmic rays, gamma rays, or
stars. Direct and indirect dark matter searches rely on observing an excess of events above background,
and a lot of controversies have arisen over the origin of measured excesses (dark matter signal or misconstrued
background?). In my talk I will show that nuclear physics data have become important for dark
matter searches. With the new high-quality cosmic ray measurements from the AMS-02 experiment, the
major uncertainty in modeling cosmic ray fluxes is in the nuclear physics cross sections for spallation and
fragmentation of cosmic rays off interstellar hydrogen and helium. The understanding of direct detection
backgrounds is limited by poor knowledge of cosmic ray activation in detector materials, with order of
magnitude differences between simulation codes. A scarcity of data on nuclear structure functions, especially
spin structure functions, blurs the connection between dark matter theory and experiments. What
is needed, ideally, are new measurements using polarized beams against nuclear targets to furnish spin
structure data, and proton beams and perhaps helium beams against isotopes of He, Li, Be, B, C, N, O,
Fe, Ni (for indirect searches) and Ge, Xe, Ar (for direct searches).
OC 2 2:00 PM
Experimental Studies of the 13,14 B(n, γ) Rates for Nucleosynthesis Towards the r process
S.G. Altstadt, K. Goebel, T. Heftrich, R. Plag, R. Reifarth, Institute for Applied Physics, University of
Frankfurt, Germany. M. Heil, M. Heine, M. Holl, D. Rossi, GSI Helmholtzzentrum fuer
208