Related papers: The r-Process without Excess Neutrons

Heavy elements like gold, platinum or uranium are produced in the r-process, which needs neutron-rich and explosive environments. Neutron star mergers are a promising candidate for an r-process site. They exhibit three different channels…

The type II supernova is considered as a candidate site for the production of heavy elements. The nucleosynthesis occurs in an intense neutrino flux, we calculate the electron fraction in this environment.

The existence of nuclei with exotic combinations of protons and neutrons provides fundamental information on the forces acting between nucleons. The maximum number of neutrons a given number of protons can bind, neutron drip line1, is only…

The focus of the present review is the production of the heaviest elements in nature via the r-process. A correct understanding and modeling requires the knowledge of nuclear properties far from stability and a detailed prescription of the…

The nucleosynthesis of elements beyond iron is dominated by neutron captures in the s and r processes. However, 32 stable, proton-rich isotopes cannot be formed during those processes, because they are shielded from the s-process flow and…

We consider hot accretion disk outflows from black hole - neutron star mergers in the context of the nucleosynthesis they produce. We begin with a three dimensional numerical model of a black hole - neutron star merger and calculate the…

Abundance observations indicate the presence of often surprisingly large amounts of neutron capture (i.e., s- and r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the…

We investigate the nucleosynthesis process in high-entropy ($s/k_{\rm B}\gtrsim100$) and very fast-expanding ($\tau_{\rm exp}\sim10^{-3}\ {\rm s}$) materials. In such a material with the electron fraction near 0.5, an interesting…

Although the rapid neutron-capture process, or r-process, is fundamentally important for explaining the origin of approximately half of the stable nuclei with A > 60, the astrophysical site of this process has not been identified yet. Here…

A number of possible mechanisms have been suggested to generate density inhomogeneities in the early Universe which could survive until the onset of primordial nucleosynthesis and generate neutron-rich regions. In this work we are not…

Neutron-star mergers were recently confirmed as sites of rapid-neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis. However, in Galactic chemical evolution models, neutron-star mergers alone cannot reproduce the observed element abundance patterns…

A possible mechanism for the formation of heavy-mass elements in supernovae is the rapid neutron-capture-mechanism (r-process). It depends upon the electron-fraction $Y_e$, a quantity which is determined by beta-decay-rates. In this paper,…

Progress in the astrophysical understanding of r-process nucleosynthesis also depends on the knowledge of nuclear-physics quantities of extremely neutron-rich isotopes. In this context, experiments at CERN-ISOLDE have played a pioneering…

We use results from long-time core-collapse supernovae simulations to investigate the impact of the late time evolution of the ejecta and of the nuclear physics input on the calculated r-process abundances. Based on the latest…

We study here the formation of heavy r-process nuclei in the high-entropy environment of rapidly expanding neutrino-driven winds from compact objects. In particular, we explore the sensitivity of the element creation in the A>130 region to…

It has long been suggested that fission cycling may play an important role in the r-process. Fission cycling can only occur in a very neutron rich environment. In traditional calculations of the neutrino driven wind of the core-collapse…

We use network calculations of r-process nucleosynthesis to explore the origin of the peak in the solar r-process abundance distribution near nuclear mass number A = 160. The peak is due to a subtle interplay of nuclear deformation and beta…

There has been significant progress in the understanding of the r-process over the last ten years. The conditions required for this process have been examined in terms of the parameters for adiabatic expansion from high temperature and…

While it is now known that double neutron star binary systems (DNSs) are copious producers of heavy elements, there remains much speculation about whether they are the sole or even principal site of rapid neutron-capture (r-process)…

We examine the r-process in the neutrino-driven proto-neutron-star (PNS) wind of core-collapse supernovae in light of the recent findings of massive neutron stars in binaries as well as of an indication of neutron-richness in the PNS ejecta…