Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe
H. Oberhummer,
1*
A. Csótó,
2
H. Schlattl
3
The bulk of the carbon in our universe is produced in
the triple-alpha process in helium-burning red giant stars. We
calculated the change of the triple-alpha reaction rate in a
microscopic 12-nucleon model of the 12C nucleus and looked
for the effects of minimal variations of the strengths of the
underlying interactions. Stellar model calculations were performed with
the alternative reaction rates. Here, we show that outside a narrow
window of 0.5 and 4% of the values of the strong and Coulomb forces,
respectively, the stellar production of carbon or oxygen is reduced by
factors of 30 to 1000.
1 Institute of Nuclear Physics, Vienna
University of Technology, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 8-10, A-1040 Vienna,
Austria.
2 Department of Atomic Physics,
Eötvös University, Pázmány Péter
Sétány 1/A, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary.
3 Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik,
Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, D-85741 Garching, Germany.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
ohu{at}kph.tuwien.ac.at
