Nucleosynthesis of "Light" Heavy Nuclei in Neutrino-driven Winds. Role of ($\alpha ,n$) reactions

Abstract

Neutrino-driven winds following core collapse supernovae have been proposed as a suitable site where the so-called light heavy elements (between Sr to Ag) can be synthetized. For moderately neutron-rich winds, ($\alpha ,n$) reactions play a critical role in the weak r process, becoming the main mechanism to drive nuclear matter towards heavier elements. In this paper we summarize the sensitivity of network-calculated abundances to the astrophysical conditions, and to uncertainties in the ($\alpha ,n$) reaction rates. A list of few ($\alpha ,n$) reactions were identified to dominate the uncertainty in the calculated elemental abundances. Measurements of these reactions will allow to identify the astrophysical conditions of the weak r process by comparing calculated/observed abundances in r-limited stars.

References in corpus (4)

• Production of Light Element Primary Process nuclei in neutrino-driven winds
• Nucleosynthesis in the Early Galaxy
• Neutron-capture elements in the metal-poor globular cluster M15
• Role of ($\alpha$,n) reactions under $r$-process conditions in neutrino-driven winds revisited