proton-proton chain

proton-proton chain, chain of thermonuclear reactions that is the chief source of the energy radiated by the Sun and other cool main-sequence stars. Another sequence of thermonuclear reactions, called the CNO cycle, provides much of the energy released by hotter stars.

In a proton-proton chain, four hydrogen nuclei (protons) are combined to form one helium nucleus; 0.7 percent of the original mass is lost mainly by conversion into heat energy, but some energy escapes in the form of neutrinos (ν). First, two hydrogen nuclei (¹H) combine to form a hydrogen-2 nucleus (²H, deuterium) with the emission of a positive electron (e⁺, positron) and a neutrino (ν). The hydrogen-2 nucleus then rapidly captures another proton to form a helium-3 nucleus (³He), while emitting a gamma ray (γ). In symbols: From this point the reaction chain may follow any of several paths, but it always results in one helium-4 nucleus, with the emission of two neutrinos in total. The energy of the neutrinos emitted is different for the different paths. In the most direct continuation, two helium-3 nuclei (produced as indicated above) form one helium-4 nucleus (⁴He, alpha particle) with the release of two protons, The path that produces the most energetic neutrinos uses a helium-4 nucleus as a catalyst and cycles through beryllium and boron isotopes at intermediate states. In symbols: The latter path occurs only at relatively high temperatures and is of interest because such energetic neutrinos were detected in a large-scale experiment using tetrachloroethylene as a detection medium. Other experiments detected neutrinos from lower-temperature reactions including the initial proton-proton reaction. The detection rates in all these experiments were all smaller than theoretically predicted. This decrease, called the solar neutrino problem, was because the electron-neutrinos emitted by the Sun change to muon-neutrinos or tau-neutrinos before reaching the detectors, which were optimized to detect electron-neutrinos. This change in neutrino type is a consequence of neutrinos’ having a small mass and not being massless as originally supposed. Compare CNO cycle.