Sensitivity study of \emph{r}-process abundances to nuclear masses

TL;DR

This study systematically examines how uncertainties in nuclear masses affect r-process element abundances, establishing a quantitative relation that links mass uncertainties to abundance variations across different models.

Contribution

It introduces a new quantitative relation between nuclear mass uncertainties and r-process abundance uncertainties, validated across multiple mass models.

Findings

A mass uncertainty of ±0.5 MeV causes about 2.5 times abundance variation.

The relation between mass and abundance uncertainties is consistent across different nuclear mass models.

Systematic variation of nuclear masses reveals the sensitivity of r-process predictions to nuclear physics inputs.

Abstract

The impact of nuclear mass uncertainties on the \emph{r}-process abundances has been systematically studied with the classical \emph{r}-process model by varying the mass of every individual nucleus in the range of $\pm0.1$ to $\pm3.0\ \mathrm{MeV}$ based on six different mass models. A new quantitative relation between the uncertainties of \emph{r}-process abundances and those of the nuclear masses is extracted, i.e., a mass uncertainty of $\pm0.5\ \mathrm{MeV}$ would lead to an abundance uncertainty of a factor around 2.5. It is found that this conclusion holds true for various mass models.