The Role of Fission in Neutron Star Mergers and its Impact on the r-Process Peaks

TL;DR

This study examines how different nuclear physics inputs, especially fission processes and half-lives, influence the predicted abundance patterns of heavy elements produced in neutron star mergers, focusing on the r-process peaks.

Contribution

It compares the effects of three nuclear mass models and four fission fragment distributions on r-process nucleosynthesis predictions, highlighting the impact on abundance peaks and the shift in the third peak.

Findings

Fission during freeze-out causes a shift in the third r-process peak.

Different nuclear mass models significantly affect abundance predictions.

Recent beta-decay data can mitigate peak shifts and alter abundance distributions.

Abstract

Comparing observational abundance features with nucleosynthesis predictions of stellar evolution or explosion simulations can scrutinize two aspects: (a) the conditions in the astrophysical production site and (b) the quality of the nuclear physics input utilized. We test the abundance features of r-process nucleosynthesis calculations for the dynamical ejecta of neutron star merger simulations based on three different nuclear mass models: The Finite Range Droplet Model (FRDM), the (quenched version of the) Extended Thomas Fermi Model with Strutinsky Integral (ETFSI-Q), and the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) mass model. We make use of corresponding fission barrier heights and compare the impact of four different fission fragment distribution models on the final r-process abundance distribution. In particular, we explore the abundance distribution in the second r-process peak and the rare-earth sub-peak as a function of mass models and fission fragment distributions, as well as the origin of a shift in the third r-process peak position. The latter has been noticed in a number of merger nucleosynthesis predictions. We show that the shift occurs during the r-process freeze-out when neutron captures and {\beta}-decays compete and an (n,{\gamma})-({\gamma},n) equilibrium is not maintained anymore. During this phase neutrons originate mainly from fission of material above A = 240. We also investigate the role of {\beta}-decay half-lives from recent theoretical advances, which lead either to a smaller amount of fissioning nuclei during freeze-out or a faster (and thus earlier) release of fission neutrons, which can (partially) prevent this shift and has an impact on the second and rare-earth peak as well.