Related papers: Stars as thermonuclear reactors: their fuels and a…
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…
Recent equations of state for dense nuclear matter are discussed with possible phase transitions arising in neutron stars such as pion, kaon and hyperon kondensation, superfluidity and quark matter. Specifically, we treat the nuclear to…
Radioactive decay of unstable atomic nuclei leads to liberation of nuclear binding energy in the forms of gamma-ray photons and secondary particles (electrons, positrons); their energy then energises surrounding matter. Unstable nuclei are…
Multi-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the post-bounce evolution of collapsed stellar iron cores have demonstrated that convective overturn between the stalled shock and the neutrinosphere can have an important effect on the…
Explosive nucleosynthesis is a combination of the nuclear physics of thermonuclear reactions, and the hydrodynamics of the plasma in which the reactions occur. It depends upon the initial conditions---the stellar evolution up to the…
The outcome of helium burning is the formation of the two elements, carbon and oxygen. The ratio of carbon to oxygen at the end of helium burning is crucial for understanding the final fate of a progenitor star and the nucleosynthesis of…
Neutron stars have long been regarded as extra-terrestrial laboratories from which we can learn about extreme energy density matter at low temperatures. In this article, I highlight some of the recent advances made in astrophysical…
Nuclear interactions of ions accelerated at the surface of flaring stars can produce fresh isotopes in stellar atmospheres. Although this nucleosynthesis is not significant for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy, it can be important for a…
In stars that lie on the main sequence in the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram, like our sun, hydrogen is fused to helium in a number of nuclear reaction chains and series, such as the proton-proton chain and the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycles.…
Motivated by the possibility that the laws of physics could be different in other regions of space-time, we consider nuclear processes in universes where the weak interaction is either stronger or weaker than observed. We focus on the…
The nucleosynthesis of light elements, from helium up to silicon, mainly occurs in Red Giant and Asymptotic Giant Branch stars and Novae. The relative abundances of the synthesized nuclides critically depend on the rates of the nuclear…
The burning of a neutron star by strange matter is analyzed using relativistic combustion theory with a planar geometry. It is shown that such burning is probably neither slow combustion nor simple detonation. Fast combustion without…
Three-dimensional (3D), time dependent numerical simulations, of flow of matter in stars, now have sufficient resolution to be fully turbulent. The late stages of the evolution of massive stars, leading up to core collapse to a neutron star…
Two of the key issues in understanding the neutron-to-proton ratio in a core-collapse supernova are discussed. One of these is the behavior of the neutrino-nucleon cross sections as supernova energies. The other issue is the many-body…
It is shown that a conversion of neurons into strange quark matter in neutron stars is possible by means of a combustion process with a well-defined front. Conditions for the realization of a specific combustion mode, whether deflagration,…
Formed in the aftermath of gravitational core-collapse supernova explosions, neutron stars are unique cosmic laboratories for probing the properties of matter under extreme conditions that cannot be reproduced in terrestrial laboratories.…
A neutron star is born as a hot, lepton-rich protoneutron star (PNS) and cools via neutrino emission, eventually allowing heavy ions in the outer layers to crystallize into a solid crust. We develop a simple analytic estimate for the onset…
A fully self-consistent model of the neutron star inner crust based upon models of the nucleonic equation of state at zero temperature is constructed. The results nearly match those of previous calculations of the inner crust given the same…
The hydrogen and helium accreted by X-ray bursting neutron stars is periodically consumed in runaway thermonuclear reactions that cause the entire surface to glow brightly in X-rays for a few seconds. With models of the emission, the mass…
The r-process, or the rapid neutron-capture process, of stellar nucleosynthesis is called for to explain the production of the stable (and some long-lived radioactive) neutron-rich nuclides heavier than iron that are observed in stars of…