Faddeev Three-body Calculation of Triple-Alpha Reaction

The triple-alpha (3α) process, in which three ⁴He nuclei are transformed into a ¹²C nucleus, is studied in terms of a three-alpha (3-α) model. The reaction rate of the process is calculated via an inverse process, 3-α photodisintegration of a ¹²C nucleus. Both of 3-α bound and -continuum states are calculated by a Faddeev method with accommodating the long range Coulomb interaction. Results of the 3α reaction rate are about 10³ times larger than a standard rate from the Nuclear Astrophysics Compilation of Reaction Rates (NACRE) at a low temperature (T = 10⁷ K), which means our results are remarkably smaller than recent three-body calculations by the method of continuum-discretized coupled-channel.