Solar Fusion III Workshop

The Solar Fusion III workshop (SF-III) took place from July 26-29, 2022, at Berkeley (USA) under the sponsorship of ChETEC-INFRA, the NSF network N3AS and the Institute for Nuclear Theory (USA). Initially scheduled for 2020, ten years after the previous SF-II workshop, SF-III brought together experimentalists and theoreticians working on hydrogen burning nuclear reactions with the final goal of setting a new set of consensus reaction rates appropriate for solar and stellar evolution models.

In total, 55 scientists from 12 countries took part in the workshop. The activities at the workshop were split across 9 Working Groups (WGs), focusing on specific nuclear reactions (or groups of nuclear reactions) with each participant being able to join up to 3 different WGs according to interests and expertise. WGs presented the state-of-the-art of the field in plenary talks, and then followed their activities by individual meetings. Final summaries were presented on the last day. A full schedule and presentation slides is available at the workshop web site.

Solar Fusion III Participants in Berkeley (Credit: Solar Fusion III)

During the workshop, the WGs have reviewed developments that happened during the last decade and have established the roadmap for the post-workshop activities. The final goal of the workshop is to provide the community with a new generation of nuclear cross sections that take into consideration the advancements in the field since SF-II in 2010. Results will be published in a review article.

In the context of ChETEC-INFRA, the activities at the workshop are of central relevance, in particular to activities in the Astronuclear Library (NA3/WP8) network which aims at providing standardized nuclear reaction rates for hydrogen burning.