Speaker
Description
The $^{187}$Re/$^{187}$Os cosmochronometer is a nuclear dating technique used to determine the age of a galaxy and the onset of nucleosynthesis. It relies on the slow $\beta$-decay of $^{187}$Re into $^{187}$Os with a half-life of 41.2 Gyr. However, the precision of this technique depends on the accuracy of nucleosynthesis yields of these isotopes. $^{186}$Re is an unstable isotope with a half-life of 3.72 days and acts as a branching point for s-process nucleosynthesis, where it can either $\beta$-decay into $^{186}$Os, electron-capture into $^{186}$W, or neutron-capture into $^{187}$Re. We present the first indirect experimental constraint of the neutron-capture reaction rate on unstable $^{186}$Re and its implications for the s-process yield of $^{187}$Re and the Re/Os cosmochronometer. The $^{186}$W($\alpha$,t)$^{187}$Re experiment was performed at the Oslo Cyclotron Laboratory with the OSCAR-SiRi detector setup, and the dataset is being used to calculate the neutron-capture reaction rate on $^{186}$Re using the Oslo method.