ABSTRACT
Nuclear astrophysics is the study of nuclear-level processes that occur naturally in space. Notably, this includes understanding the chain of fusion events, or nucleosynthesis, that occurs in stars, and how this can be detected from a distance by measuring the radiation these processes produce. The most important nuclear process that is responsible for the energy production in stars and has great role in astrophysics is nuclear fusion. Many nuclear reactions between charged particles occur by the particles tunneling through their mutual Coulomb barrier so that they can interact by the strong nuclear force. For many stars, nuclear fusion will end long before iron is formed as the temperatures in their cores are not sufficient to trigger fusion reactions beyond, say, helium or carbon. The life cycles of stars are closely dependent on these energy dependent processes. As nuclear fusion is of utmost importance in nuclear astrophysics we will elaborate it little bit in context of Coulomb barrier penetration probability.
