Abstract
Astrophysical nucleosynthesis is a family of diverse processes by which atomic nuclei undergo nuclear reactions and decay to form new nuclei. The complex nature of nucleosynthesis, which can involve as many as tens of thousands of interactions between thousands of nuclei, makes it difficult to study any one of these interactions in isolation using standard approaches. In this work, we present a new technique, nucleosynthesis tracing, that we use to quantify the relative fraction of nuclear abundances that pass through individual nuclear reaction, decay, and fission processes at any point during nucleosynthesis. We apply this technique to study fission and decay as they occur in the rapid neutron capture () process of nucleosynthesis.
6 More- Received 13 August 2020
- Revised 30 April 2021
- Accepted 10 June 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.104.015803
©2021 American Physical Society