The bottleneck of the CNO burning and the age of the Globular Clusters

Abstract

The transition between the Main Sequence and the Red Giant Branch in low mass stars is powered by the onset of the CNO burning, whose bottleneck is the $^{14}$N(p,$\gamma)^{15}$O. The LUNA collaboration has recently improved the low energy measurements of the cross section of this key reaction. We analyse the impact of the revised reaction rate on the estimate of the Globular Clusters ages, as derived from the turnoff luminosity. We found that the age of the oldest Globulars should be increased by about 0.7-1 Gyr with respect to the current estimates.