Conveners
Stellar contribution: NS mergers
- Friedrich Thielemann (University of Basel)
Marica Branchesi
(Gran Sasso Science Institute)
29/06/2018, 09:00
Invited
Ground-breaking discoveries happened during the first observing runs of the Advanced gravitational-wave detectors, LIGO and Virgo. On September 14 2015 the gravitational waves from the coalescence of a binary system of black holes marked the beginning of a new exploration of the Universe through gravitational waves [1]. This detection was followed by other detections of binary black-hole...
Duncan Galloway
(Monash University)
29/06/2018, 09:30
Oral
Thermonuclear (type-I) X-ray bursts arise from unstable ignition of accreted fuel on the surface of neutron stars in close binary systems. Many nuclear reactions contribute to the burning that follows ignition (e.g. Galloway & Keek, 2017), and the rates of several reactions help to shape the burst light curve. It has long been a goal of observers to deduce information about these reactions...
Hendrik Schatz
(Michigan State University)
29/06/2018, 09:45
Oral
Accreting neutron stars have crusts that differ in composition from regular neutron stars. The composition determines the thermal properties of the crust and thus observables during the accretion phase, such as X-ray bursts and superbursts in the shallow crust, as well as quiescent X-ray emission that probes the physics in the deeper regions of the crust. In addition accreted neutron stars...
Aaron Couture
(Los Alamos National Laboratory)
29/06/2018, 10:00
Oral
A growing body of work has shown that individual neutron capture cross sections play an important role in the final isotopic abundances from a wide range of possible astrophysical scenarios, including wind ejecta from neutron star mergers. Unfortunately, the isotopes which seem to show the greatest impact are far from stability and not within experimental reach for direct measurements in the...
Ruchi Garg
(University of Edinburgh)
29/06/2018, 10:15
Oral
A long standing problem in stellar evolution concerns the production mechanism for proton-rich heavy elements. These p-nuclei are thought to be produced in supernova explosions via photodisintegration of heavy elements. However, current stellar models fail to reproduce the observed abundances of lighter p-nuclei such as 92Mo and 96Ru [1]. An alternative possibility for production of the light...
Rachel Titus
(NSCL/MSU)
29/06/2018, 10:30
Talk, Grant Assigned
Sensitivity studies of the late stages of stellar core collapse with respect to electron-capture rates indicate the importance of a region of nuclei near the N=50 shell closure, just above doubly magic 78Ni. In the present work, it has been demonstrated that uncertainties in key characteristics of the evolution, such as the lepton fraction, electron fraction, entropy, stellar density, and...
Matthew Mumpower
(Los Alamos National Laboratory)
29/06/2018, 10:45
Oral
The recent observation of gravitational waves and electromagnetic counterpart to GW170817 [1] has provided fresh impetus to understand the formation of the heaviest elements on the periodic table. The merging of two neutron stars offers a potentially robust site for the neutron-rich nucleosynthesis of these elements in the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). However, many challenging...
