Measurement of the $^{40}$Ca($\alpha $,$\gamma )^{44}$Ti reaction for supernovae nucleosynthesis

The $^{40}$Ca($\alpha $,$\gamma )^{44}$Ti reaction is the main production reaction for the radioactive nucleus $^{44}$Ti, which serves as an important diagnostic for understanding explosive nucleosynthesis. A new self-consistent measurement of this reaction was performed to determine the integral cross section below E$_{\alpha }$ = 5.2 MeV. An in-beam measurement using the LLNL CAMS FN Tandem Van de Graaf was performed followed by a low-background counting of the activation product. A report on the progress of this experiment is given.