Experimental challenge to nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae - Very early epoch of type II SNe -

Nucleosynthesis is one of the keys in studying the mechanism of core-collapse supernovae, which is an interesting challenge for modern science. The νp-process, which is similar to an explosive hydrogen burning process, has been proposed as the most probable process in the very early epoch of type II supernovae. Here, we discuss our experimental efforts for the νp-process, the first extensive direct measurements of the (α,p) reactions on bottle-neck proto-rich nuclei in light mass regions. Other challenges for the νp-process study are also discussed.