CNO cycle

The CNO cycle (for carbon–nitrogen–oxygen; sometimes called Bethe–Weizsäcker cycle after Hans Albrecht Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) is one of the two known sets of fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium, the other being the proton–proton chain reaction (p–p cycle), which is more efficient at the Sun's core temperature. The CNO cycle is hypothesized to be dominant in stars that are more than 1.3 times as massive as the Sun. Unlike the proton-proton reaction, which consumes all its constituents, the CNO cycle is a catalytic cycle. In the CNO cycle, four protons fuse, using carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopes as catalysts, each of which is consumed at one step of the CNO cycle, but re-generated in a later step. The end product is one alpha particle (a stable helium nucleus), two positrons, and two electron neutrinos. There are various alternative paths and catalysts involved in the CNO cycles, but all these cycles have the same net result: 4 + 2 _Electron → + 2 _Positron + 2 _Electron + 2 _Electron neutrino + 3 _Gamma + 24.7MeV → + 2 _Electron neutrino + 7 _Gamma + 26.7MeV The positrons will almost instantly annihilate with electrons, releasing energy in the form of gamma rays. The neutrinos escape from the star carrying away some energy. One nucleus goes on to become carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopes through a number of transformations in a repeating cycle. The proton–proton chain is more prominent in stars the mass of the Sun or less. This difference stems from temperature dependency differences between the two reactions; pp-chain reaction starts at temperatures around 4e6K (4 megakelvin), making it the dominant energy source in smaller stars. A self-maintaining CNO chain starts at approximately 15e6K, but its energy output rises much more rapidly with increasing temperatures so that it becomes the dominant source of energy at approximately 17e6K. The Sun has a core temperature of around 15.7e6K, and only 1.7% of nuclei produced in the Sun are born in the CNO cycle.