An international research team has achieved an important milestone for astrophysics at GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt: In the CRYRING@ESR storage ring, scientists were able to measure nuclear reactions at extremely low energies for the first time, mirroring the conditions inside stars. This novel experimental approach lays the foundation for decoding the formation of elements in the universe with even greater precision in the future.

In the extreme environments of stars, nuclear processes often occur at very low energies. These so-called “sub-MeV energies” (below 1 megaelectron volt) are difficult to replicate in the laboratory because the probability of atomic nuclei interacting at such low speeds is exceptionally small.

In the FAIR storage ring CRYRING@ESR, researchers were able to lower the energy available for the nuclear reaction in the center-of-mass frame of the two particles down to 403 kiloelectron volts. This marks a new record: It is the lowest energy at which a nuclear reaction has ever been measured in a heavy-ion storage ring. The new findings were recently published in the journal European Physical Journal A.