Quantum Dynamical Microscopic Approach to Stellar Carbon Burning

Carbon burning plays a pivotal role in the late-stage evolution of massive stars and the conditionsof certain supernovae. The complexity of carbon burning can be described by quantumphenomena, such as quantum tunnelling and nuclear molecular states. Quantum dynamicalmethods are presented to demonstrate the importance of treating specific alignments andnucleon-nucleon interactions in the 12C + 12C reaction. We incorporate a microscopic model,time-dependent Hartree-Fock, with the time-dependent wavepacket method to ascertain the roleof nucleon-nucleon interactions upon the fusion cross-section of the 12C + 12C reaction. Thedensity-constrained time-dependent Hartree-Fock method enables us to take advantage of thedynamic effects seen in the microscopic model, in the form of extracted ion-ion potentials, andimplement them into the time-dependent wavepacket method. Specifically treating all alignmentsin the system, we are able to better predict the location of resonant structures associatedwith nuclear molecular states compared to other macroscopic implementations. Exploiting themicroscopic method further we can explore low-energy regions of the cross-section associatedwith excitations of the compound nucleus, 24Mg. Through the analysis of multipole giant resonancecalculations we probed into the early continuum of the multipole giant resonance regionsto explain the expected resonances believed to occupy the Gamow window of this reaction. Toascertain the role of alpha clustered exit partitions on 12C + 12C fusion, the 20Ne + 4He and 16O+ 8Be exit partitions were included in an approach inspired by coupled-channels. By applyingdifferent coupling schemes we show the effects coupled-partitions have on the direct componentof the fusion cross-section.