Related papers: From stars to nuclei
The nuclear symmetry energy is intimately connected with nuclear astrophysics. This contribution focuses on the estimation of the symmetry energy from experiment and how it is related to the structure of neutron stars. The most important…
Wolf-Rayet stars have been detected in a large number of galaxies experiencing intense bursts of star formation. All stars initially more massive than a certain, metallicity-dependent, value are believed to experience the Wolf-Rayet phase…
Context. Oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet (WO) stars represent a very rare stage in the evolution of massive stars. Their spectra show strong emission lines of helium-burning products, in particular highly ionized carbon and oxygen. The…
Nuclear reactions drive the stellar evolution and contribute to the stellar and galactic chemicals abundances. New determinations of the nuclear reaction rates for key fusion reactions of stellar evolution are now available, paving the way…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are massive ($\geq$10 M$_{\odot}$) evolved stars undergoing advanced nuclear burning in their cores, rapidly approaching the end of their lives as supernovae. Their powerful winds enrich the interstellar medium with…
The nucleosynthesis in the first massive stars may be constrained by observing the surface composition of long-lived very iron-poor stars born around 10 billion years ago from material enriched by their ejecta. Many interesting clues on…
The majority of nuclear reactions in astrophysics involve unstable nuclei which are not fully accessible by experiments yet. Therefore, there is high demand for reliable predictions of cross sections and reaction rates by theoretical means.…
A neutron star is pictured as a gigantic nucleus overwhelmed by the number of neutrons, unlike real atomic nuclei, that have a similar number of neutrons and protons. Is this true? What if we could find, or create nuclei without protons?…
We examine the properties of Wolf--Rayet (WR) stars predicted by models of rotating stars taking account of the new mass loss rates for O--type stars and WR stars (Vink et al. \cite{Vink00}, \cite{Vink01}; Nugis & Lamers \cite{NuLa00}) and…
Neutron stars in close binary star systems often accrete matter from their companion stars. Thermonuclear ignition of the accreted material in the atmosphere of the neutron star leads to a thermonuclear explosion which is observed as an…
Stellar evolution models are a cornerstone of young star astrophysics, which necessitates that they yield accurate and reliable predictions of stellar properties. Here, I review the current performance of stellar evolution models against…
Neutron stars are some of the densest manifestations of massive objects in the universe. They are ideal astrophysical laboratories for testing theories of dense matter physics and provide connections among nuclear physics, particle physics…
The past years have witnessed tremendous progress in understanding the properties of neutron stars and of the dense matter in their cores, made possible by electromagnetic observations of neutron stars and the detection of gravitational…
Massive stars burn hydrogen through the CNO cycle during most of their evolution. When mixing is efficient, or when mass transfer in binary systems happens, chemically processed material is observed at the surface of O and B stars. ON stars…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are massive stars that have lost most or all of their hydrogen via powerful stellar winds. Recent observations have indicated that hydrogen-free WR stars have cooler temperatures than those predicted by current…
The properties of neutron stars are investigated within the relativistic central variational method by using a realistic nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interaction. The strong repulsion of realistic $NN$ interactions at short distances is treated…
The abundances of the isotopes of the elements C, N and O are mainly affected by the cold CNO cycles in non-explosive stellar situations, or by the hot CNO chains that can develop in certain explosive sites, like classical novae. Helium…
Wolf-Rayet stars (WRs) represent the end of a massive star's life as it is about to turn into a supernova. Obtaining complete samples of such stars across a large range of metallicities poses observational challenges, but presents us with…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
Strong metallicity-dependent winds dominate the evolution of core He-burning, classical Wolf-Rayet (cWR) stars, which eject both H and He-fusion products such as 14N, 12C, 16O, 19F, 22Ne and 23Na during their evolution. The chemical…