Related papers: Nuclear composition and heating in accreting neutr…
Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear explosions on the neutron star (NS) surface caused by mass accretion from a companion star. Observations of X-ray bursts provide valuable information on X-ray binary systems, e.g., binary parameters,…
The simulation of heavy element nucleosynthesis requires input from yet-to-be-measured nuclear properties. The uncertainty in the values of these off-stability nuclear properties propagates to uncertainties in the predictions of elemental…
Superbursts are thought to be powered by the unstable ignition of a carbon-enriched layer formed from the burning of accreted hydrogen and helium. As shown by Cumming & Bildsten, the short recurrence time hinges on the crust being…
The composition and equation of state of the outer crust of non-accreting neutron stars is computed using accurate nuclear mass tables. The main goal of the present study is to understand the impact of the symmetry energy on the structure…
(abridged) We have investigated the physical conditions under which accreting neutron stars can both produce and preserve sufficient quantities of carbon fuel to trigger superbursts. Our models span the plausible ranges of neutron star…
Accreting neutron stars host a number of astronomical observables which can be used to infer the properties of the underlying dense matter. These observables are sensitive to the heating and cooling processes taking place in the accreted…
Accretion disks with masses ~0.001-0.1 Msun form during the merger of neutron star (NS)-NS and black hole-NS binaries. Initially, such hyper-accreting disks cool efficiently by neutrino emission and their composition is driven neutron-rich…
I summarize some constraints on the physics of neutron stars arising from X-ray observations of the surfaces of neutron stars, focusing on using models of low-magnetic-field neutron star atmospheres to interpret their X-ray spectra. I…
We investigate the effect of the hot CNO cycle breakout reaction 15O(alpha,gamma)19Ne on the occurrence of type I X-ray bursts on accreting neutron stars. For f_rp <~ 0.1, where f_rp is a dimensionless factor by which we multiply the…
Observations of Type I X-ray bursts have long been taken as evidence that the sources are neutron stars. Black body models approximate the spectral data and imply a suddenly heated neutron star cooling over characteristic times of seconds…
The core collapse of massive, rapidly-rotating stars are thought to be the progenitors of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and their associated hyper-energetic supernovae (SNe). At early times after the collapse, relatively low angular…
We review and extend with nonrelativistic nuclear mean field calculations a previous study of the impact of the nuclear symmetry energy on the structure and composition of the outer crust of nonaccreting neutron stars. First, we develop a…
The pattern of nucleosynthesis during the explosion of a low-mass neutron star formed in a close binary system in the stripping scenario is considered. In the scenario considered the shock arising during the explosion is shown to strongly…
Nucleosynthesis in evolved (RGB and AGB) low-mass stars is reviewed under the light of the reaction rates recommended in the NACRE compilation (Angulo et al. 1999). We use a parametric model of stellar nucleosynthesis to investigate the…
Neutron stars accreting matter from low-mass binary companions are observed to undergo bursts of X-rays due to the thermonuclear explosion of material on the neutron star surface. We use recent results on superfluid and superconducting…
Atomic nuclei are transformed into each other in the cosmos by nuclear reactions inside stars: -- the process of nucleosynthesis. The basic concepts of determining nuclear reaction rates inside stars and how they manage to burn their fuel…
Thermonuclear X-ray bursts occur on the surface of an accreting neutron star (NS), and their characteristics and interplay with the surrounding circumstance could be a clue to understand the nature of the NS and accretion process. For this…
When a neutron star accretes matter from a companion star in a low-mass X-ray binary, the accreted gas settles onto the stellar surface through a boundary/spreading layer. On rare occasions the accumulated gas undergoes a powerful…
We develop a phenomenological statistical model for dilute star matter at finite temperature, in which free nucleons are treated within a mean-field approximation and nuclei are considered to form a loosely interacting cluster gas. Its…
We investigate the formation by accretion of massive primordial protostars in the range 10 to 300 Msun. The high accretion rate used in the models (4.4 x 10^{-3} Msun/yr) causes the structure and evolution to differ significantly from those…