Measurements of astrophysical neutron capture cross sections via the inverse reaction

Neutron capture of short-lived isotopes can be important within several astrophysical environments. The laboratory investigation of these reactions can be difficult since these isotopes cannot form a target. We used radioactive beams and measured the inverse reaction instead. Particularly we used C-15 and Li-9 beams to measure the C-14(n,gamma)C-15, and Li-8(n, gamma)Li-9 reactions. We determined the reaction rates within the astrophysically interesting temperature range. Our data for the C-14 capture rises quickly up to 8mub and then it decreases by a factor of two at 1 MeV. We investigated neutron capture by 8 Li which is one possible leak of the bridging reaction Li-8(alpha, n)B-11 of the A=8 gap. We found that this leak is lower than the theoretical expectations.