Nuclear Reaction Screening, Weak Interactions, and r-process Nucleosynthesis in High Magnetic Fields

Nuclear weak interactions, supernova nucleosynthesis and neutrino oscillation

We study the nuclear weak response in light-to-heavy mass nuclei and calculate neutrino-nucleus cross sections. We apply these cross sections to the explosive nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae and find that several isotopes of rare elements Li, B, La, Ta and several others are predominantly produced by the neutrino-process nucleosynthesis. We discuss how to determine the suitable neut...

Magnetic Protoneutron Star Winds and r-Process Nucleosynthesis

Because of their neutron-richness and association with supernovae, postexplosion protoneutron star winds are thought to be a likely astrophysical site for rapid neutron capture nucleosynthesis (the r-process). However, the most recent models of spherical neutrino-driven protoneutron star winds do not produce robust r-process nucleosynthesis for ‘canonical’ neutron stars with a gravitational mas...

Advances in r-Process Nucleosynthesis

During the last several decades, there have been a number of advances in understanding the rapid neutron-capture process (i.e., the r-process). These advances include large quantities of high-resolution spectroscopic abundance data of neutron-capture elements, improved astrophysical models, and increasingly more precise nuclear and atomic physics data. The elemental abundances of the heavy neut...

Primordial Black Holes and r-Process Nucleosynthesis.

We show that some or all of the inventory of r-process nucleosynthesis can be produced in interactions of primordial black holes (PBHs) with neutron stars (NSs) if PBHs with masses 10^{-14}  M_{⊙}<M_{PBH}<10^{-8}  M_{⊙} make up a few percent or more of dark matter. A PBH captured by a NS sinks to the center of the NS and consumes it from the inside. When this occurs in a rotating millisecond-pe...

Open questions in r-process and νp-process nucleosynthesis