Using TAS Analysis to Contrain I(?) values for ⁵¹Fe and ⁶⁰Ga

Accreting neutron stars provide insight into the behavior of ultra dense, cold matter where quantum effects are present. Hydrogen and helium build up on the surface, until the rise in temperature and density reach thermonuclear runaway, which can result in a Type I X-ray burst (XRB). The nuclear burning that occurs is called the rapid proton capture (rp-) process. Abundance outputs of astrophysical models of XRBs depend on many nuclear reaction rates. ⁵⁹Cu(p,γ) is an important reaction to ascertain if the rp-process stays in the Ni-Cu cycle or if the process moves to a higher atomic mass. The reaction rate has a strong effect on the light curves of XRBs; therefore, it needs to be constrained to improve comparisons between models and observations. These reaction rates cannot be measured directly, they are determined using experimental inputs for Hauser-Feshbach calculations. These inputs will be constrained using the β-Oslo technique; a method that has proven useful on neutron rich nuclei. To benchmark this method for ?+ decays, total absorption spectroscopy was used to study the β+ decay of ⁵¹Fe and ⁶⁰Ga. TAS measurements were used to extract I(?) values for both nuclei. In this presentation, the first results of the TAS analysis will be discussed.