3:30–4:30 pm
Zoom Zoom link will be emailed to our events mailing list. To be added to this this, send your request to Tiffany Kurns <tkurns@uchicago.edu>
Reverse engineering the astrophysical r-process with CARIBU
Guy Savard, Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago
The r-process, a series of rapid neutron-capture reactions in cataclysmic astrophysical events such as neutron-star mergers or supernovae explosions, is responsible for the creation of roughly half of the heavy nuclei in our universe. The conditions present in these events are such that the process proceeds through reactions on very neutron-rich radioactive nuclei, many of which have never been observed in the laboratory. Sensitivity studies have looked at various scenarios for the r-process conditions and identified nuclei whose basic properties would have the largest impact on the distribution of produced nuclei. At ANL, a program centered around the ATLAS facility is aimed at improving access to these nuclei and has developed tools to measure the most critical quantities to constrain r-process scenarios.
The talk will discuss the basic nuclear physics inputs required to understand the r-process and will present the novel CARIBU upgrade of ATLAS that is now providing access to some key nuclei along the r-process path. Recent measurements on nuclei around the rare-earth r-process abundance peak, focusing on Penning trap mass measurements on very exotic isotopes, will be discussed together with the information they provide on the astrophysical conditions required at the r-process site. Other applications of these radioactive nuclei to understand, for example, the origin of the reactor neutrino anomaly, will also be presented.