Address
Department of Physics and Astronomy
176 Phillips Hall
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255
Phone: (919) 962-3016
Fax: (919) 962-0480
E-mail: iliadis@unc.edu
Research Interests
My main research interest is the field of nuclear
astrophysics. Two of
the most important questions we are dealing with concern the evolution of
stars, and the origin of the elements in the universe. It is well-known
that most elements are created in stars during certain
stages of their evolution. For example, stars like our sun convert
hydrogen
into helium by nuclear fusion reactions over a period of billions of
years.
A large variety of different stellar objects exist in the universe.
Very old objects, like red giant stars in globular clusters, burn
their
nuclear
fuel at low temperatures. Other stars, for example supernovae, novae and
x-ray bursts, release their energy in stellar explosions. The complex
nuclear
physics processes which occur during various stages of stellar burning
are poorly understood.
Our research group
focuses on the experimental and theoretical
determination of
nuclear reaction and decay probabilities of importance to stellar burning.
The experimental program is mainly based at the
Triangle
Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL). In-house experiments are
performed mainly at low bombarding energies below 1 MeV by using the
LENA facility or at higher energies utilizing the 10 MV
FN
tandem accelerator together with the Enge magnetic splitpole spectrograph.
The measured nuclear cross sections are incorporated into our nuclear
reaction network code in order to simulate the nucleosynthesis and
nuclear energy generation in a variety of stellar objects.
"Thermonuclear Processes", by S. Starrfield, C. Iliadis and W. R. Hix, in: Classical
Novae (2nd edition). Ed. M. F. Bode and A. Evans (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2008).
A.E. Champagne (UNC)
