Have Superheavy Elements been Produced in Nature?

Abstract

We discuss the possibility whether superheavy elements can be produced in Nature by the astrophysical rapid neutron capture process. To this end we have performed fully dynamical network r-process calculations assuming an environment with neutron-to-seed ratio large enough to produce superheavy nuclei. Our calculations include two sets of nuclear masses and fission barriers and include all possible fission channels and the associated fission yield distributions. Our calculations produce superheavy nuclei with A ~ 300 that however decay on timescales of days.

12 pages, 11 figures

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Cited by in corpus (28)

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• Neutrino-driven winds in the aftermath of a neutron star merger: nucleosynthesis and electromagnetic transients
• The Role of Fission in Neutron Star Mergers and its Impact on the r-Process Peaks
• On the nuclear robustness of the r process in neutron-star mergers
• Detectability of compact binary merger macronovae
• Fission properties of superheavy nuclei for r-process calculations
• Californium-254 and kilonova light curves
• Using excitation-energy dependent fission yields to identify key fissioning nuclei in r-process nucleosynthesis
• $\beta$-delayed fission in $r$-process nucleosynthesis
• Actinide Production in Neutron-Rich Ejecta of a Neutron Star Merger
• Supernova neutrinos and nucleosynthesis
• Nucleosynthesis and observation of the heaviest elements
• Fission and the r-process nucleosynthesis of translead nuclei in neutron star mergers
• Probing the production of actinides under different r-process conditions
• Microscopic description of fission in superheavy nuclei with the parametrization D1M${}^{\ast }$ of the Gogny energy density functional
• Systematic study of shell gaps in nuclei
• Covariant density functional theory input for r-process simulations in actinides and superheavy nuclei: the ground state and fission properties
• $\alpha$-decay properties of even-even superheavy nuclei
• Empirical description of beta-delayed fission partial half-lives
• Search for long-lived superheavy eka-tungsten with radiopure ZnWO${}_4$ crystal scintillator
• r-Java 2.0: the nuclear physics
• Beta-delayed fission in the coupled Quasi-particle Random Phase Approximation plus Hauser-Feshbach approach
• Nuclear density-functional theory and fission of super-heavy elements
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• First high-precision direct determination of the atomic mass of a superheavy nuclide