Related papers: Do we Owe our Existence to Gravitational Waves?
The neutron-star collision revealed by the event GW170817 gave us a first glimpse of a possible birthplace of most of our heavy elements. The multi-messenger nature of this historical event combined gravitational waves, a gamma-ray burst…
The cosmic origin of the elements heavier than iron has long been uncertain. Theoretical modelling shows that the matter that is expelled in the violent merger of two neutron stars can assemble into heavy elements such as gold and platinum…
People usually smile when astrophysicists assert that we are sons of the stars, but human life confirms this sentence: about 65% of the mass of our body is made up of oxygen, carbon occurs in all organic life and is the basis of organic…
The production of about half of the heavy elements found in nature is assigned to a specific astrophysical nucleosynthesis process: the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). Although this idea has been postulated more than six decades…
The rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) is responsible for the creation of roughly half of the elements heavier than iron, including precious metals like silver, gold, and platinum, as well as radioactive elements such as thorium and…
The origin of the elements is a fascinating question that scientists have been trying to answer for the last seven decades. The formation of light elements in the primordial universe and heavier elements in astrophysical sources occurs…
Neutron stars are excellent emitters of gravitational waves. Squeezing matter beyond nuclear densities invites exotic physical processes, many of which violently transfer large amounts of mass at relativistic velocities, disrupting…
The rapid neutron capture or 'r process' of nucleosynthesis is believed to be responsible for the production of approximately half the natural abundance of heavy elements found on the periodic table above iron (with proton number $Z=26$)…
Understanding the origin of the elements has been a decades long pursuit, with many open questions still remaining. Old stars found in the Milky Way and its dwarf satellite galaxies can provide answers because they preserve clean elemental…
Intense fluxes of neutrinos are emitted by the hot neutron star produced in a supernova. The electron neutrino and antineutrino capture reactions on neutrons and protons, respectively, provide heating to drive a wind from the hot neutron…
The rapid neutron capture process (r process) is believed to be responsible for about half of the production of the elements heavier than iron and contributes to abundances of some lighter nuclides as well. A universal pattern of r-process…
Stars of ~8-100 solar masses end their lives as core-collapse supernovae (SNe). In the process they emit a powerful burst of neutrinos, produce a variety of elements, and leave behind either a neutron star or a black hole. The wide mass…
Merging neutron stars and neutron star-black holes binaries are powerful sources of gravitational waves. They have also been suggested as possible sources of cosmic gamma-ray bursts and are discussed as sites for the formation of r-process…
The kilonova emission observed following the binary neutron star merger event GW170817 provided the first direct evidence for the synthesis of heavy nuclei through the r-process. The late-time transition in the spectral energy distribution…
The discovery of the radioactively powered kilonova AT2017gfo, associated with the short-duration gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A and the gravitational wave source GW170817, has provided the first direct evidence supporting binary neutron star…
The gravitational-wave detectors LIGO and Virgo together with their electromagnetic partner facilities have transformed the modus operandi in which we seek information about the Universe. The first ever-observed neutron-star…
We summarize the observations of the spin periods of rapidly accreting neutron stars. If gravitational radiation is responsible for balancing the accretion torque at the observed spin frequencies of ~300 Hz, then the brightest of these…
The existence of neutron star mergers has been supported since the discovery of the binary pulsar and the observation of its orbital energy loss, consistent with General Relativity. They are considered nucleosynthesis sites of the rapid…
The discovery of gravitational waves has confirmed old theoretical predictions that binary systems formed with compact stars play a crucial role not only for cosmology and nuclear astrophysics. As a byproduct of these and subsequent…
The mergers of binary compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes are of central interest to several areas of astrophysics, including as the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), sources of high-frequency gravitational waves and…