Neutron Star Mergers and Nucleosynthesis of Heavy Elements

By Friedrich-Karl Thielemann, M. Eichler, I. Panov, B. Wehmeyer. 2017

275 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The existence of neutron star mergers has been supported since the discovery of the binary pulsar and the observation of its orbital energy loss, consistent with General Relativity. They are considered nucleosynthesis sites of the rapid neutron-capture process (r-process), which is responsible for creating approximately half of all heavy elements beyond Fe and is the only source of elements beyond Pb and Bi. Detailed nucleosynthesis calculations based on the decompression of neutron star matter are consistent with solar r-process abundances of heavy nuclei. Neutron star mergers have also been identified with short-duration -ray bursts via their IR afterglow. The high neutron densities in ejected matter permit a violent r-process, leading to fission cycling of the heaviest nuclei in regions far from (nuclear) stability. Uncertainties in several nuclear properties affect the abundance distributions. The modeling of astrophysical events also depends on the hydrodynamic treatment, the occurrence of a neutrino...

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/adda97dc07932a70c9cd4d8a494a2f5dddc9646e

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Citations in the corpus

The Origin of r-process Elements in the Milky Way (2017, background): “…& Schramm (1974), recently gained popularity because the high neutron fraction allows robust production of the 2nd and 3rd r-process peaks (e.g., Freiburghaus et al. 1999; Korobkin et al. 2012; Bauswein et al. 2013; Radice et al. 2016; Thielemann et al. 2017, but see Nishimura et al. 2015).”
Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Mass Ejection, Electromagnetic Counterparts, and Nucleosynthesis (2018, background): “…that are thought to be a likely site for the production of r-process nuclei (Lattimer & Schramm 1974; Symbalisty & Schramm 1982; Eichler et al. 1989; Meyer 1989; Freiburghaus et al. 1999; Goriely et al. 2011; Korobkin et al. 2012; Wanajo et al. 2014; Just et al. 2015; Thielemann et al. 2017).”
Neutron Star Mergers Might Not Be the Only Source of r-process Elements in the Milky Way (2018, background): “In addition, large uncertainties in r-process nucleosynthesis calculations (e.g., Mumpower et al. 2016; Thielemann et al. 2017; Horowitz et al. 2018) do not allow at the moment to derive strong constraints on the i-process component.”
Colloquium : Superheavy elements: Oganesson and beyond (2019, background): “These high neutron densities allow the seed nuclei that are present in the environment to undergo multiple neutron captures before beta decaying, leading to the synthesis of neutron-rich nuclei (see also (Freiburghaus et al., 1999; Goriely, 2015; Lippuner and Roberts, 2015; Mendoza-Temis et al., 201”