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Production of 26Al in stellar hydrogen-burning environments: spectroscopic properties of states in 27Si

Model predictions of the amount of the radioisotope 26Al produced in hydrogen-burning environments require reliable estimates of the thermonuclear rates for the 26gAl(p,γ)27Si and 26mAl(p,γ)27Si reactions. These rates depend upon the spectroscopic properties of states in 27Si within about 1 MeV of the 26gAl+p threshold (Sp = 7463 keV). We have studied the 28Si(3He,α)27Si reaction at 25 MeV using a high-resolution quadrupole-dipole-dipole-dipole magnetic spectrograph. For the first time with a transfer reaction, we have constrained Jπ values for states in 27Si over Ex = 7.0 - 8.1 MeV through angular distribution measurements. Aside from a few important cases, we generally confirm the energies and spin-parity assignments reported in a recent γ-ray spectroscopy study. The magnitudes of neutron spectroscopic factors determined from shell-model calculations are in reasonable agreement with our experimental values extracted using this reaction.