Molecular Resonances at Deep Sub-barrier Energy
Yasutaka Taniguchi (Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, Department of Information Engineering, National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Kagawa College, Mitoyo, Japan); Masaaki Kimura (Department of Physics, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, Nuclear Reaction Data Centre, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan)
The existence of molecular resonances at sub-barrier energy has been a significant problem in nuclear astrophysics because they strongly affect the fusion reaction rate in type Ia supernovae and heavy stars. However, experimental surveys have been limited to 4 MeV and cannot access the deep sub-barrier energy due to a very small fusion cross section. Here we predict a couple of resonances with , , and in the deep sub-barrier energy based on the antisymmetrized molecular dynamics calculation that reproduces the known resonances and low-lying spectrum of .