Inelastic Scattering of Alphas on $^{24}Mg$ as a Surrogate for Stellar Carbon Burning

Inelastic excitation of $^{24}Mg$ is used as a surrogate for the $^{12}C+^{12}C$ reaction at stellar energies. The branching ratio for $^{12}C+^{12}C\rightarrow^{20}Ne+\alpha$ and $^{12}C+^{12}C\rightarrow^{23}Na+p$ is determined by the ratio of decays via the alpha and proton decay channels of the excited $^{24}Mg$. An experiment was conducted at the Texas A\&M Cyclotron Institute in November of 2014 using the STARLiTeR detector array and the K150 (88'') Cyclotron. The experiment used a 40 MeV alpha beam and a thin $^{24}Mg$ target. The scattered alpha and the ejected alpha or proton were detected using silicon detectors while gammas from the often excited daughters were detected using an array of germanium ``clover'' detectors. This work was supported in part by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344; Texas A\&M under DOE Office of Nuclear Physics grant DE-FG02-93ER40773 and NNSA grants DE-FG52-09NA29467 and DE-NA0000979.