The status and future of direct nuclear reaction measurements for stellar burning

Aliotta, M.; Buompane, R.; Couder, M.; Couture, A.; deBoer, R. J.; Formicola, A.; Gialanella, L.; Glorius, J.; Imbriani, G.; Junker, M.; Langer, C.; Lennarz, A.; Litvinov, Yu. A.; Liu, W.-P.; Lugaro, Maria; Matei, C.; Meisel, Z.; Piersanti, L.; Reifarth, R.; Robertson, D.; Simón, A.; Straniero, O.; Туміно, А.; Wiescher, M.; Xu, Y.

doi:10.1088/1361-6471/ac2b0f

“…We explored stronger 3α reaction rates by implementing a 37.8% larger rate as a multiplicative factor on the currently adopted NACRE rate. At A goal of forthcoming low-energy nuclear experiments is to further reduce the uncertainty in the 12 C(α,γ) 16 O reaction rate probability distribution (deBoer et al 2017;Smith et al 2021;Aliotta et al 2022). Partnering with this laboratory astrophysics quest are other avenues for placing astrophysical constraints on the 12 C(α,γ) 16 O reaction rate, from the period spectra of variable carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (Chidester et al 2022), the lifetimes of He core-burning stars (Imbriani et al 2001;Jones et al 2015), and the surface abundances of WO-type Wolf-Rayet stars (Aadland et al 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resolving the Peak of the Black Hole Mass Spectrum

Farag

¹

,

Renzo

²

,

Farmer

³

et al. 2022

ApJ

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Gravitational-wave (GW) detections of binary black hole (BH) mergers have begun to sample the cosmic BH mass distribution. The evolution of single stellar cores predicts a gap in the BH mass distribution due to pair-instability supernovae (PISNe). Determining the upper and lower edges of the BH mass gap can be useful for interpreting GW detections of merging BHs. We use MESA to evolve single, nonrotating, massive helium cores with a metallicity of Z = 10−5, until they either collapse to form a BH or explode as a PISN, without leaving a compact remnant. We calculate the boundaries of the lower BH mass gap for S-factors in the range S(300 keV) = (77,203) keV b, corresponding to the ±3σ uncertainty in our high-resolution tabulated 12C(α,γ)16O reaction rate probability distribution function. We extensively test temporal and spatial resolutions for resolving the theoretical peak of the BH mass spectrum across the BH mass gap. We explore the convergence with respect to convective mixing and nuclear burning, finding that significant time resolution is needed to achieve convergence. We also test adopting a minimum diffusion coefficient to help lower-resolution models reach convergence. We establish a new lower edge of the upper mass gap as M lower ≃ 60 − 14 + 32 M ⊙ from the ±3σ uncertainty in the 12C(α, γ)16O rate. We explore the effect of a larger 3α rate on the lower edge of the upper mass gap, finding M lower ≃ 69 − 18 + 34 M ⊙. We compare our results with BHs reported in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog.

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“…A goal of forthcoming low-energy nuclear experiments is to further reduce the uncertainty in the 12 C(α,γ) 16 O reaction rate probability distribution (deBoer et al 2017;Smith et al 2021;Aliotta et al 2022). Partnering with this laboratory astrophysics quest are other avenues for placing astrophysical constraints on the 12 C(α,γ) 16 O reaction rate from the period spectrum of variable carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (Chidester et al 2022), lifetimes of He core burning stars (Imbriani et al 2001;Jones et al 2015), and the surface abundances of WO-type Wolf-Rayet stars (Aadland et al 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resolving The Peak Of The Black Hole Mass Spectrum

Farag

¹

,

Renzo

²

,

Farmer

³

et al. 2022

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Gravitational wave (GW) detections of binary black hole (BH) mergers have begun to sample the cosmic BH mass distribution. The evolution of single stellar cores predicts a gap in the BH mass distribution due to pair-instability supernova (PISN). Determining the upper and lower edges of the BH mass gap can be useful for interpreting GW detections from merging BHs. We use MESA to evolve single, non-rotating, massive helium cores with a metallicity of Z = 10 −5 until they either collapse to form a BH or explode as a PISN without leaving a compact remnant. We calculate the boundaries of the lower BH mass gap for S-factors in the range S(300 keV) = (77,203) keV b, corresponding to the ±3σ uncertainty in our high resolution tabulated 12 C(α,γ) 16 O reaction rate probability distribution function. We extensively test the temporal and mass resolution to resolve the theoretical peak of the BH mass spectrum across the BH mass gap. We explore the convergence with respect to convective mixing and nuclear burning, finding that significant time resolution is needed to achieve convergence. We also test adopting a minimum diffusion coefficient to help lower resolution models reach convergence. We establish a new lower edge of the upper mass gap as M lower 60 +32 −14 M from the ±3σ uncertainty in the 12 C(α, γ) 16 O rate. We explore the effect of a larger 3-α rate on the lower edge of the upper mass gap, finding M lower 69 +34 −18 M . We compare our results with BHs reported in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog.

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“…Nuclear energy generation at the ignition of a superburst is set by the 12 C+ 12 C fusion rate. At temperatures relevant for the accreted neutron star envelope, this nuclear reaction rate is based on nuclear theory calculations and is uncertain by several orders of magnitude (Beck et al 2020;Tang & Ru 2022;Aliotta et al 2022). Modern theoretical 12 C+ 12 C rates include results from barrier penetration calculations using the Sao Paulo potential (Yakovlev et al 2010), coupled-channel calculations performed using the M3Y+repulsion double-folding potential (Esbensen et al 2011), empirical extrapolations based on the hindrance model (Jiang et al 2018), experimentally derived results based on the trojan horse method (THM) (Tumino et al 2018), THM results adopting a Coulomb renormalization (Mukhamedzhanov et al 2019), and a microscopic model with molecular resonances (Taniguchi & Kimura 2021).…”

Section: Carbon Ignition Curvesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraining Accreted Neutron Star Crust Shallow Heating with the Inferred Depth of Carbon Ignition in X-ray Superbursts

Meisel¹

2022

Preprint

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Evidence has accumulated for an as-yet unaccounted for source of heat located at shallow depths within the accreted neutron star crust. However, the nature of this heat source is unknown. I demonstrate that the inferred depth of carbon ignition in X-ray superbursts can be used as an additional constraint for the magnitude and depth of shallow heating. The inferred shallow heating properties are relatively insensitive to the assumed crust composition and carbon fusion reaction rate. For low accretion rates, the results are weakly dependent on the duration of the accretion outburst, so long as accretion has ensued for enough time to replace the ocean down to the superburst ignition depth. For accretion rates at the Eddington rate, results show a stronger dependence on the outburst duration. Consistent with earlier work, it is shown that urca cooling does not impact the calculated superburst ignition depth unless there is some proximity in depth between the heating and cooling sources.

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The status and future of direct nuclear reaction measurements for stellar burning

Cited by 19 publications

References 285 publications

Resolving the Peak of the Black Hole Mass Spectrum

Resolving the Peak of the Black Hole Mass Spectrum

Resolving The Peak Of The Black Hole Mass Spectrum

Constraining Accreted Neutron Star Crust Shallow Heating with the Inferred Depth of Carbon Ignition in X-ray Superbursts

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