251 research outputs found
Neutrinos, Fission Cycling, and the r-process
It has long been suggested that fission cycling may play an important role in
the r-process. Fission cycling can only occur in a very neutron rich
environment. In traditional calculations of the neutrino driven wind of the
core-collapse supernova, the environment is not sufficiently neutron rich to
produce the r-process elements. However, we show that with a reduction of the
electron neutrino flux coming from the supernova, fission cycling does occur
and furthermore it produces an abundance pattern which is consistent with
observed r-process abundance pattern in halo stars. Such a reduction can be
caused by active-sterile neutrino oscillations or other new physics.Comment: Typos corrected. Presented at NIC-IX, International Symposium on
Nuclear Astrophysics - Nuclei in the Cosmos - IX, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland,
25-30 June, 200
Fission Cycling in a Supernova r-process
Recent halo star abundance observations exhibit an important feature of
consequence to the r-process: the presence of a main r-process between the
second and third peaks which is consistent among halo stars. We explore fission
cycling and steady-beta flow as the driving mechanisms behind this feature. The
presence of fission cycling during the r-process can account for
nucleosynthesis yields between the second and third peaks, whereas the presence
of steady-beta flow can account for consistent r-process patterns, robust under
small variations in astrophysical conditions. We employ the neutrino-driven
wind of the core-collapse supernova to examine fission cycling and steady-beta
flow in the r-process. As the traditional neutrino-driven wind model does not
produce the required very neutron-rich conditions for these mechanisms, we
examine changes to the neutrino physics necessary for fission cycling to occur
in the neutrino-driven wind environment, and we explore under what conditions
steady-beta flow is obtained.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
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