Thursday, November 05, 2026, 16:00
WBGB/019
Eliana Masha, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden
Abstract:
Nearly all the elements around us were forged in stars, from the carbon and oxygen essential to life to the heavy elements found on Earth. Understanding the nuclear reactions behind this cosmic alchemy is key to explaining how stars evolve and how the chemical makeup of the Universe is established. Measuring these reactions in the laboratory, however, is very challenging. At stellar energies their probabilities are very small, and the weak signals are easily lost in the background from cosmic rays and natural radioactivity. Such measurements require intense, high-resolution ion beams combined with an extremely low-background environment. Underground accelerator laboratories provide exactly these conditions, as the rock overburden reduces the cosmic-ray induced background by several orders of magnitude.
This talk will give a broad overview of experimental nuclear astrophysics and take a closer look at the science cases, experimental capabilities and recent results at the Felsenkeller underground laboratory in Dresden, Germany.