Progress in nuclear astrophysics of east and southeast Asia

Abstract

Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary research field of nuclear physics and astrophysics, seeking for the answer to a question, how to understand the evolution of the universe with the nuclear processes which we learn. We review the research activities of nuclear astrophysics in east and southeast Asia which includes astronomy, experimental and theoretical nuclear physics, and astrophysics. Several hot topics such as the Li problems, critical nuclear reactions and properties in stars, properties of dense matter, r-process nucleosynthesis, and ν-process nucleosynthesis are chosen and discussed in further details. Some future Asian facilities, together with physics perspectives, are introduced.

Horizons: nuclear astrophysics in the 2020s and beyond

“…Through the nuclear reactions that power them, stars have taken primordial hydrogen and helium forged during the Big Bang and used it to produce the majority of the chemical elements found in nature (see figure 1). These stars then dispersed this material-sometimes by spectacular explosions-so it became incorporated in subsequent generations of stars and the planets that accompany them [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. The underlying nuclear reaction processes occurring during the various phases of stellar evolution are guided by specific properties of nuclei that are then reflected in the observed cosmic abundance distributions.…”

The production of actinides in neutron star mergers

“…[3][4][5][6][7] for recent reviews and references therein). This discovery also offers new insights on a number of key issues including, e.g., the nature of dense matter and the expansion rate of the universe [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. However, the comparison of the observed spectroscopic and photometric data to theory models only confirmed the existence of heavy elements with high atomic opacity [23][24][25][26][27], likely lanthanides, as well as the potential signature of lighter r-process elements such as strontium [28] (see also [29][30][31]).…”