Past exam of the short options paper shared by Prelims and Parts A and B of the physics course of the University of Oxford / 2018 / S3 / 3 / d / Solution

Two major suppressions are missing from the one-femtometre rectangular estimate. First, the Coulomb barrier extends far beyond nuclear distances and is not rectangular. A semiclassical integral through it produces the Gamow factor $\exp (-2\pi \eta )$, with $\eta ={\alpha }_{\mathrm{fs}}\sqrt{\mu c^2/(2E)}$; at the illustrative thermal energy it is already of order $10^{-11}$. A thermal average additionally weights the high-energy tail and is not the same as evaluating a single thermal energy.

Second, two protons cannot simply form a stable bound diproton. The proton–proton chain starts with a weak-interaction conversion producing a deuteron, a Positron and a neutrino. The weak transition probability supplies a further very large suppression. Thus the quoted tiny fusion probability is not a pure one-dimensional barrier transmission probability with universal energy-independent meaning.

The Sun contains of order $10^{57}$ nucleons in a hot dense core and offers enormously many encounters over astronomical times. A very small reaction probability per encounter can therefore supply its luminosity while consuming only a small fraction of the fuel per unit time. The small weak reaction rate is also crucial for the long stellar lifetime; a larger core temperature increases burning and triggers expansion and cooling.