Fission Cycling in a Supernova r-process
Abstract
Recent halo star abundance observations exhibit an important feature of consequence to the r-process: the presence of a main r-process between the second and third peaks which is consistent among halo stars. We explore fission cycling and steady-beta flow as the driving mechanisms behind this feature. The presence of fission cycling during the r-process can account for nucleosynthesis yields between the second and third peaks, whereas the presence of steady-beta flow can account for consistent r-process patterns, robust under small variations in astrophysical conditions. We employ the neutrino-driven wind of the core-collapse supernova to examine fission cycling and steady-beta flow in the r-process. As the traditional neutrino-driven wind model does not produce the required very neutron-rich conditions for these mechanisms, we examine changes to the neutrino physics necessary for fission cycling to occur in the neutrino-driven wind environment, and we explore under what conditions steady-beta flow is obtained.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0707.4498,
title = {Fission Cycling in a Supernova r-process},
author = {J. Beun and G. C. McLaughlin and R. Surman and W. R. Hix},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0707.4498},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages, 8 figures