Nucleosynthesis of transuranium nuclides under conditions of Mike, Par and Barbell thermonuclear explosions

TL;DR

This paper models the synthesis of transuranium nuclides during thermonuclear explosions using a kinetic approach, achieving improved agreement with experimental data and explaining observed nuclear yield anomalies.

Contribution

It introduces a time-dependent kinetic model for nucleosynthesis in thermonuclear explosions, incorporating beta decay processes and achieving better data fit than previous models.

Findings

Calculated yields Y(A) closely match experimental data with lower deviations.

Explains the even-odd yield anomaly through beta decay processes.

Provides a new modeling framework for nuclear synthesis in explosive conditions.

Abstract

The creation of transuranium nuclides under pulsed neutron fluxes of thermonuclear explosions is investigated within the kinetic model of the astrophysical r process, taking into account the time dependence of the external parameters and the processes accompanying the beta decay of neutron-rich nuclei. Time-dependent neutron fluxes in the interval ~ 10e-6 s were modeled within the framework of the developed adiabatic binary model. The probabilities of beta-delayed processes were calculated on the base of the microscopic theory of finite Fermi systems. Calculations of transuranium nuclides yields Y(A) are made for three experimental USA thermonuclear explosions "Mike" (YM), "Par" (YP) and "Barbel" (YB). The root-mean-square deviations of the calculations compare to the experimental data (r.m.s.) are 91% for YM, 33% for YP, 29% for YB , which are significantly lower than for other known calculations. The exponential approximation of the experimental dependences Y(A) is carried out and the obtained values of r.m.s are equal to 56%, 86.8% and 60.2% for YM, YP and YB correspondingly, which is better or comparable with other calculations. An even-odd anomaly in the observed yields of heavy nuclei is explained by the predominant influence of processes accompanying the beta decay of heavy neutron-excess isotopes.