Research Projects

Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary field that aims to answer fundamental questions about the synthesis of elements, energy generation in stars, and star evolution. The proposed sRG project aims to address the problem of conducting overground astrophysical experiments with low probability of occurring in nature. Currently, no gamma-spectroscopy detector setup in India is suitable for measuring reactions with pico-barn level cross-sections of interest to astrophysical phenomena. Measurements in this area are greatly hindered due to background radiation and cosmic muons. With India's first nuclear astrophysics accelerator, FRENA, the proposed setup will be critical in exploring previously unknown nuclear astrophysics reaction probabilities and possibly new reactions chains. The setup will use various principles of interaction of radiation with matter, including an active-chamber made of scintillating material for active vetoing and solid-state detectors for detecting x-rays, γ-rays, protons, and alpha particles. The Particle-Electromagnetic Radiation Coincidence setup (PERCs) will be a composite system surrounded by high-purity germanium detectors, able to distinguish environmental radiation from experimentally generated radiation. The NiCu cycle has been considered as an example of verifying the concurrence of various models with experimental results. Experiments using FRENA can produce nuclei that decay via different channels, such as the reaction ⁴⁰Ca(³²s,2pn)⁶⁹se. This type of chamber with active cosmic muon vetoing and in-situ particle-electromagnetic radiation coincidence detectors will be widely used in the Indian Physics community.