Revision of the derivation of stellar rates from experiment and impact on Eu s-process contributions

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 665(1), January 5, 2016, and is available on line at doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/665/1/012024 Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Published under licence by IOP Publishing LtdA new, general formalism to include experimental data in revised stellar rates is discussed, containing revised uncertainties. Application to the s-process shows that the actual uncertainties in the neutron capture rates can be larger than would be expected from the experimental errors alone. As a specific example for how astrophysical conclusions can depend on the approach selected to derive stellar rates, the 151Eu/(151Eu+153 Eu) abundance ratio from AGB star models is presented. Finally, a recommended workflow for the derivation of stellar rates from experiment is laid out.Peer reviewe