The Effects of Thermonuclear Reaction-Rate Variations on Nova Nucleosynthesis: A Sensitivity Study
By C. Iliadis, A. Champagne, J. José, S. Starrfield, Paul F. Tupper. 2002
182 citations recorded by the source corpus.
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 (i.e., the region in which most of the nucleosynthesis takes place). We obtain our profiles from seven different, recently published, hydrodynamic nova simulations covering peak temperatures in the range from Tpeak = 0.145 to 0.418 GK. For each of these profiles, we individually varied the rates of 175 reactions within their associated errors and analyzed the resulting abundance changes of 142 isotopes in the mass range below A = 40. In total, we performed ≈7350 nuclear reaction network calculations. We use the most recent thermonuclear reaction-rate evaluations for the mass ranges A = 1-20 and 20-40. For the theoretical astrophysicist, our results indicate the extent to which nova nucleosynthesis calculations depend on currently uncertain nuclear physics input, while for the experimental nuclear physicist, our results represent at least a qualitative guide for future measurements at stable and radioactive ion beam facilities. We find that present reaction-rate estimates are reliable for predictions of Li, Be, C, and N abundances in nova nucleosynthesis. However, rate uncertainties of several reactions have to be reduced significantly in order to predict more reliable O, F, Ne, Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Cl, and Ar abundances. Results are presented in tabular form for each adopted nova simulation.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/62f47dc268ada877cec0df85a2b9690dfabab5d5
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Citations in the corpus
- Short-Lived Nuclei in the Early Solar System: A Low Mass Stellar Source? (2003, unknown): “…1997), these stars might not be sufficiently numerous to account for the whole galactic inventory and some contribution might come from AGB stars (Busso, Gallino, & Wasserburg 1999; Mowlavi & Meynet 2000; Nollett, Busso, & Wasserburg 2003) and novae (Starrfield et al. 2000; Iliadis et al. 2002).”
- The Imprint of Nova Nucleosynthesis in Presolar Grains (2002, background): “According to a recent analysis of the effect of uncertainties in nuclear reaction rates for nova nucleosynthesis (Iliadis et al. 2002), present reaction rate estimates give reliable predictions for both 12C/13C and 14N/15N isotopic abundance ratios, in agreement with several tests performed with…”
- Constraints from Gravitational-wave Detections of Binary Black Hole Mergers on the 12C(α, γ)16O Rate (2020, background): “Varying nuclear reaction rates within their known uncertainties has been shown to a have large impact on the structure of a star (Hoffman et al. 1999; Iliadis et al. 2002).”