A rare outcome of carbon fusion: magnesium-23 and a neutron. It needs extra energy, so it happens only in the hottest carbon-burning environments.
Unlike the two main branches, this one takes energy instead of releasing it: the colliding carbon nuclei must bring in at least about 2.6 MeV between them. At the temperatures of ordinary carbon burning very few collisions are that energetic, so the branch is small. It matters for the elements made where carbon burns hotter: in the explosions of the very massive first stars it helps set how much sodium and aluminium is made. The magnesium-23 it makes is radioactive and decays within seconds to sodium-23. Direct measurements have reached the energies at which it operates in stars.
Facts
- How well known
- A direct measurement has reached stellar energies, and the extrapolation below it leans on the better-measured proton channel; how far that holds depends on the same open questions as carbon fusion as a whole.
- Live evaluation
- No live evaluation yet · Evaluations
- Q-value · energy needed
- -2.598 MeV
- Gamow window
- 2600–2835 keVAbove the 2.60 MeV thresholdcore carbon burning, 15 M☉ star, 0.83 GK (Carbon burning)
- 2600–2675 keVAbove the 2.60 MeV thresholdsuperburst ignition, accreting neutron star, 0.5 GK (Carbon burning)
- Product 23Mg
- radioactive, t½ = 11.3 s
- Kind
- Fusion
How it was measured
1 measurement, 2015Show the listHide the list
2015
Nuclear Science Laboratory, Notre DameUniversity of Notre Dame
Direct measurement at the surface · deep into the astrophysical energy range
First direct measurement at stellar energies, by neutron counting checked against the 23Mg activity; the extrapolation uses the mirror reaction 12C(12C,p)23Na. [1]
Measurements (EXFOR)
Every dataset EXFOR holds for this reaction, drawn by the energies it covers, against the energies a star uses.
3 datasets in 3 EXFOR entries, 2006–2015
- Lowest energy in EXFOR
- 3.1 MeV
- Bucher et al., 2015 · S · C2168.002
- Distance from the Gamow peak
- 2.1 Gamow widths above
- E₀ = 2600 keV, window 2600–2830 keV
- Rate from energies not in EXFOR
- 100%
- at T₉ = 0.83, smooth estimate · 100% of it lies below the lowest energy in EXFOR
- Gamow window, hatched where no measurement reaches
- Outlined bars are shown but not counted (the rule is under “How these numbers are made”).
- A diamond is a dataset at a single energy. Bars running off the right edge continue to higher energies.
The datasets of the gap map, by quantity
| Quantity | Datasets | E_cm range (keV) |
|---|---|---|
| σcross section | 1 | 4.42 MeV – 6.48 MeV |
| SS-factor | 1 | 3.1 MeV – 6.47 MeV |
| σ→Eₓpartial | 1 | 3.7 MeV – 6.01 MeV |
How these numbers are made
Lowest measured energy, everywhere in the data explorer: the lowest centre-of-mass energy at which a dataset in EXFOR measures the reaction itself (cross section, S-factor, angular distribution, yield or resonance strength), judged point by point. A point counts when it is a value, not an upper or lower limit, when it lies at least one standard deviation above zero, and when its energy is physical: at least 1 keV for charged particles, and not below the threshold of an endothermic reaction. Not counted: extrapolated, calculated, evaluated or derived values; superseded, deleted or preliminary data; ratios; a single S-factor value, which in EXFOR is a fit result; and indirect methods (Trojan horse, Coulomb dissociation, ANC, surrogate reactions), recognized from EXFOR's method and analysis codes, their text and the title. Frame and unit errors of EXFOR are corrected first, and values the literature shows to be upper limits are read as limits, from a list that gives the evidence for each. Datasets that reach the same energy within 0.5% are all credited, earliest first. Rate from energies not in EXFOR: the share of the rate integrand at that temperature outside the energy ranges the counted datasets cover (from their lowest measured point to their highest), with a constant S-factor (σ ∝ S(E₀)/E · e^−2πη, so the integrand is e^(−E/kT − 2πη)); for a neutron capture, σ ∝ 1/v. Resonances make the real integrand lumpy, so read it as a smooth baseline.
Details
The channel is endothermic (Q = −2.60 MeV) and closed below that energy, so the ordinary Gamow window (2.1 ± 0.45 MeV at 0.83 GK) lies almost entirely below threshold: the energies that contribute start at 2.60 MeV and fall off within a few hundred keV, as the Boltzmann factor drops faster than the Coulomb penetration rises (the range shown in the facts box). Bucher et al. (2015) measured it directly at the Notre Dame FN tandem into the astrophysical energy range, with a neutron detector whose efficiency was simulated and checked with monoenergetic neutrons, and cross-checked the cross section by counting the 23Mg activity. Their extrapolation to lower energies uses data on the mirror proton channel, 12C(12C,p)23Na; they quote a rate uncertainty smaller than astrophysical models require, and find the channel important for sodium and aluminium production in Population III pair-instability supernovae, and non-negligible for the weak s-process and for 60Fe.
In carbon-shell burning the main neutron source of the weak s-process is 22Ne(α,n)25Mg, with the α particles supplied by 12C(12C,α)20Ne; the n channel adds neutrons directly, and how much depends on its share of the total rate. Pignatari et al. (2013) followed the s-process and p-process yields of a 25 M☉ star with the total rate and the three channels varied, and found them sensitive to both.
Peak energy E0 ± half the 1/e width, centre of mass, from the AME2020 masses. For an endothermic reaction the ordinary window would lie partly or wholly below the threshold, |Q|, where the reaction cannot happen; the range shown starts at the threshold and runs to where the product of the Boltzmann factor and the Coulomb penetration, exp(−E/kT − 2πη), has fallen by 1/e from its maximum above threshold.
Evaluations
Compilations that combine the data into a recommended rate.
- —G. R. Caughlan, W. A. Fowler, At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 40, 283 (1988) [2]
Open questions
Related reactions
References
- 1.
B. Bucher, X. D. Tang, X. Fang et al.
First direct measurement of 12C(12C,n)23Mg at stellar energies
Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 251102 (2015) · 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.251102 · arXiv:1507.03980
- 2.
G. R. Caughlan, W. A. Fowler
Thermonuclear reaction rates V
At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 40, 283 (1988)
- 3.
M. Pignatari, R. Hirschi, M. Wiescher et al.
The 12C + 12C reaction and the impact on nucleosynthesis in massive stars
Astrophys. J. 762, 31 (2013) · 10.1088/0004-637X/762/1/31 · arXiv:1212.3962
How to cite this page
J. Skowronski, 12C(12C,n)23Mg, in Reaction atlas, 2026-10-12, https://jskowron.eu/atlas/12C-12Cn-23Mg.
Cite the date you used; it is the last change to this page.
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