Related papers: Radioactive isotopes in the interstellar medium
The last decades brought an impressive progress in synthesizing and studying properties of nuclides located very far from the beta stability line. Among the most fundamental properties of such exotic nuclides, usually established first, is…
The cosmic evolution of the chemical elements from the Big Bang to the present time is driven by nuclear fusion reactions inside stars and stellar explosions. A cycle of matter recurrently re-processes metal-enriched stellar ejecta into the…
Gamma-ray instrumentation for astronomical spectroscopy consists of multiple-interaction detectors in space combined with sophisticated post-processing of detector events on ground. Spectral signatures in the MeV regime originate from…
Radio spectroscopy offers a number of tools for studying a large variety of astrophysical phenomena, ranging from stars and their environment to interstellar and intergalactic medium, active galactic nuclei (AGN) and distant quasars. Main…
The measurement of gamma rays at MeV energies from cosmic radioactivities is one of the key tools for nuclear astrophysics, in its study of nuclear reactions and how they shape objects such as massive stars and supernova explosions.…
Gamma-ray lines from radioactive isotopes, ejected into interstellar space by cosmic nucleosynthesis events, are observed with new space telescopes. The Compton Observatory had provided a sky survey for the isotopes 56Co, 22Na, 44Ti, and…
In this letter we introduce a new method to determine the radiative neutrino decay rate in the presence of a medium. Our approach is based on the generalisation of the optical theorem at finite temperature and density. Differently from…
Gamma-ray line observations provide a versatile tool for studies of nucleosynthesis processes and supernova physics. In particular, the observation of radioactive species in the interstellar medium probes recent nucleosynthesis activity on…
Cosmic nucleosynthesis co-produces unstable isotopes, which emit characteristic gamma-ray emission lines upon their radioactive decay that can be measured with SPI on INTEGRAL. High spectral resolution allows to derive velocity constraints…
Energy in stars is provided by nuclear reactions, which, in many cases, produce radioactive nuclei. When stable nuclei are irradiated by a flux of protons or neutrons, capture reactions push stable matter out of stability into the regime of…
A broad array of interstellar absorption features that appear in the ultraviolet spectra of bright sources allows us to measure the abundances and ionization states of many important heavy elements that exist as free atoms in the…
In the late nineteenth century, Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity and thus the physics of weak interactions, well before atomic and quantum physics was known. The different types of radioactive decay, alpha, beta, and gamma…
Gamma-ray line studies are capable of identifying radioactive tracer isotopes generated in cosmic nucleosynthesis events. Pioneering measurements were made 30 years ago with HEAO-C1, detecting the first interstellar gamma-ray line from…
Nuclear physics offers us a powerful tool: using nuclear resonance absorption lines to infer the physical conditions in astrophysical settings which are otherwise difficult to deduce. Present-day technology provides an increase in…
Neutron capture cross sections of unstable isotopes are important for neutron induced nucleosynthesis as well as for technological applications. A combination of a radioactive beam facility, an ion storage ring and a high flux reactor would…
The pattern of radiation energy deposition in substances at the microscopic level of lattice, molecule size, or the cell's nucleus is not uniform. The energy of radiation is transferred to the substance medium in the form of discrete,…
Radioactivity was recently discovered as a source of decoherence and correlated errors for the real-world implementation of superconducting quantum processors. In this work, we measure levels of radioactivity present in a typical laboratory…
The analysis of correlations between fluctuations of alpha- and beta-decay rates for different radio-active elements is carried out. These fluctuations exceed significantly errors of measurements in many cases. They have the periodical…
Neutron capture cross sections of unstable isotopes are important for neutron-induced nucleosynthesis as well as for technological applications. A combination of a radioactive beam facility, an ion storage ring and a high flux reactor would…
We examine the detectability of $\gamma$-ray emission originating from the radioactive decays of unstable nuclei that are synthesized in relativistic outflows launched in magnetorotational core-collapse supernovae. The observed lines have…