Suppression of excited-state contributions to stellar reaction rates

Abstract

It has been shown in previous work [Kiss et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 191101 (2008); Rauscher et al., Phys. Rev. C 80, 035801 (2009)] that a suppression of the stellar enhancement factor (SEF) occurs in some endothermic reactions at and far from stability. This effect is re-evaluated using the ground-state contributions to the stellar reaction rates, which were shown to be better suited to judging the importance of excited-state contributions than the previously applied SEFs. An update of the tables shown in the latter work is given. The new evaluation finds 2350 cases (out of a full set of 57 513 reactions) for which the ground-state contribution is larger in the reaction direction with a negative reaction Q value than in the exothermic direction, thus providing exceptions to the commonly applied Q value rule. The results confirm the Coulomb suppression effect but lead to a larger number of exceptions than previously found. This is due to the fact that often a large variation in the g.s. contribution does not lead to a sizable change in the SEF. On the other hand, several previously identified cases do not appear anymore because it is found that their g.s. contribution is smaller than inferred from the SEF.