Related papers: Non-Explosive Hydrogen Burning: Where Do We Stand?
Neutrino-driven ejecta in core collapse supernovae (CCSNe) offer an interesting astrophysical scenario where lighter heavy elements between Sr and Ag can be synthesized. Previous studies emphasized the important role that ($\alpha,n$)…
The majority of nuclear reactions in astrophysics involve unstable nuclei which are not fully accessible by experiments yet. Therefore, there is high demand for reliable predictions of cross sections and reaction rates by theoretical means.…
A new class of neutrino dark energy models is presented. The new models are characterized by the lack of exotic particles or couplings that violate the standard model symmetry. It is shown that these models lead to several concrete…
Except for 1H, 2H, 3He, 4He, and 7Li, originating from the Big Bang, all heavier elements are made in stellar evolution and stellar explosions. Nuclear physics, and in many cases nuclear structure far from stability, enters in a crucial…
The sources of nuclear uncertainties in nova nucleosynthesis have been identified using hydrodynamical nova models. Experimental efforts have followed and significantly reduced those uncertainties. This is important for the evaluation of…
The nucleosynthesis and other observable consequences of a nova outburst depend sensitively on the details of the thermonuclear runaway which initiates the outburst. One important source of uncertainty in our current models is the nuclear…
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It is also the lightest and as such the most quantum of the elements, in the sense that quantum tunnelling, quantum delocalisation, and zero-point motion can be important. For practical…
The stability of thermonuclear burning of hydrogen and helium accreted onto neutron stars is strongly dependent on the mass accretion rate. The burning behavior is observed to change from Type I X-ray bursts to stable burning, with…
A new model of quantum mechanics, Classical Quantum Mechanics, is based on the (nearly heretical) postulate that electrons are physical objects that obey classical physical laws. Indeed, ionization energies, excitation energies etc. are…
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…
Selected topics in neutrino astrophysics are reviewed. These include the production of low energy neutrino flux from cores of collapsing stars and the expected high energy neutrino flux from some other astrophysical sites such as the…
The mergers of binary neutron stars, as well as black hole-neutron star systems, are expected to produce an electromagnetic counterpart that can be analyzed to infer the element synthesis that occurred in these events. We investigate one…
We discuss the role of the electron temperature in abundance determinations in ionized nebulae (planetary nebulae and giant HII regions). We show that, even when observations provide a direct estimate of Te, abundance determinations may…
The $\nu p$ process appears in proton-rich, hot matter which is expanding in a neutrino wind and may be realised in explosive environments such as core-collapse supernovae or in outflows from accretion disks. The impact of uncertainties in…
A remarkable fact about spherically-symmetric neutron stars in hydrostatic equilibrium - the so-called Schwarzschild stars - is that the only physics that they are sensitive to is the equation of state of neutron-rich matter. As such,…
The behavior of nuclear matter is studied at low densities and temperatures using classical molecular dynamics with three different sets of potentials with different compressibility. Nuclear matter is found to arrange in crystalline…
We describe a classical thermodynamic model that reproduces the main features of the solid hydrogen phase diagram. In particular, we show how the general structure types that are found by electronic structure calculations and the quantum…
Much of what we know about molecular clouds, and by extension star formation, comes from molecular line observations. Interpreting these correctly requires knowledge of the underlying molecular abundances. Simulations of molecular clouds…
We investigate the effects of thermonuclear reaction rate uncertainties on nova nucleosynthesis. One-zone nucleosynthesis calculations have been performed by adopting temperature-density-time profiles of the hottest hydrogen-burning zone…
Using phenomenological equations of state, we study the chemical and mechanical instabilities in hot isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter. Both instabilities are found to depend strongly on the isospin asymmetry of the nuclear matter. For a…