Astrophysical S-factor Calculation for p-p Fusion Reaction

Abstract

The current S-factor calculations for weak pp interaction involve the determination of low-energy penetration probability using the bare Coulomb Gamow factor, which renders the nature and shape of actual interaction to be insignificant. In this work, the astrophysical S-factor is obtained utilizing the WKB action integral evaluated over the inverse scattering potential for the S-wave of pp-interaction, which does not involve bare Coulomb interaction in it. The np and pp inverse potentials are constructed using the phase function method by providing a reference potential consisting of three smoothly combined Morse functions, whose model parameters are optimized using a genetic algorithm to minimize the mean-squared error between the obtained and expected scattering phase shifts. The overlap integral between the bound-state deuteron and the scattering state of pp S-wave has been evaluated at different energies all the way up to 0.0001 MeV, and corresponding fusion cross-sections are determined. The WKB action integral has been computed at all energies without any approximations. Finally, the S-factor at various energies are calculated, and S(0) has been obtained using a supervised neural network. The value of S(0) obtained using our methodology involving complete evaluation of WKB action integral without approximations is $(0.1261\pm 0.0043)\times10^{-25}$, which is almost one order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted values using various methods. The inverse potentials constructed using the reference potential approach, which does not involve explicit consideration of nuclear $\&$ Coulomb interaction, resulting in a finite range of pp-interaction, have been successful in providing a new estimate for the astrophysical s-factor that depends on the nature and shape of the actual potentials.