2008/02/20 by Anuj Parikh, A. Parikh, J. José +5 · 148 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomical and nuclear sciences #Astrophysics #Explosive material #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Monte Carlo method #Neutron #Neutron star #Nuclear data #Nuclear physics #Nuclear physics research studies #Nuclear reaction #Nucleosynthesis #Nuclide #Physics #Stars #Statistics #Stellar nucleosynthesis #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/589879
published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 178(1), 110-136 (Institute of Physics) · 91 pages, submitted to "The Astrophysical Journal Suppl. Series"
arxiv created 2008/02/20 · openalex publication_date 2008/08/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Type I X-ray bursts are violent stellar events that take place in the H/He-rich envelopes of accreting neutron stars. We have investigated the role played by uncertainties in nuclear processes on the nucleosynthesis accompanying these explosive phenomena. Two different approaches have been adopted, in the framework of postprocessing calculations. In the first one, nuclear rates are varied individually within uncertainties. Ten different models, covering the characteristic parameter space for these stellar events, have been considered. The second, somewhat complementary approach involves a Monte Carlo code in which all nuclear rates are randomly varied within uncertainty limits simultaneously. All in all, about 50,000 postprocessing calculations, with a network containing 606 nuclides (H to 113 Xe) and more than 3500 nuclear processes, have been performed in this work. A brief comparison between both procedures is outlined together with an overall account of the key nuclear reactions whose uncertainties have the largest impact in our X-ray burst nucleosynthesis studies.