Measurement of the ⁵⁶Ni(a,p)⁵⁹Cu Reaction Cross Section

Sensitivity studies have found ⁵⁹Cu(p,a)⁵⁶Ni as one of the main reactions influencing Type I X-ray bursts light curve and abundance composition. This reaction is important for the nucleosynthesis beyond Cu (Z=29) in the astrophysical rp-process powering X-ray bursts. Since the reaction at these temperatures (T < 2GK) is expected to populate only the ground state of ⁵⁶Ni, an experiment was carried out at NSCL/FRIB to directly measure the time-inverse reaction and thereby constrain the cross section of interest via the detailed balance formula. This was achieved using a low-energy radioactive ⁵⁶Ni beam from the Re-acceleration area (ReA3), together with the JENSA helium jet target. The experimental setup also included the SuperORRUBA silicon detector array for light particle detection and an early design of the GODDESS ionization chamber for detecting the heavy recoils, enabling a coincidence based analysis. In this work, I will be presenting some preliminary results from that analysis followed by a discussion on Hauser-Feshbach theoretical calculations.