Correlations between nuclear landscape boundaries and neutron-rich r-process abundances

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the boundaries of the nuclear landscape relate to neutron-rich r-process element abundances, using nuclear models and astrophysical simulations, emphasizing the importance of experimental data on drip-line nuclei like $^{39}$Na.

Contribution

It reveals strong correlations between nuclear landscape boundaries and r-process abundances, and demonstrates the impact of nuclear mass uncertainties on astrophysical nucleosynthesis predictions.

Findings

Strong correlation between $^{39}$Na separation energies and nuclear landscape size.

Covariance between nuclear boundaries and r-process abundances before the third peak.

Highlighting the need for experimental data on drip-line nuclei for better modeling.

Abstract

Motivated by the newly observed $^{39}$Na in experiments, systematic calculations of global nuclear binding energies with seven Skyrme forces are performed. We demonstrate the strong correlation between the two-neutron separation energies ($S_{2n}$) of $^{39}$Na and the total number of bound nuclei of the whole nuclear landscape. Furthermore, with calculated nuclear masses, we perform astrophysical rapid-neutron capture process ($r$-process) simulations by using nuclear reaction code TALYS and nuclear reaction network code SkyNet. $r$-process abundances from ejecta of neutron star mergers and core-collapse supernova are compared. Prominent covariance correlations between nuclear landscape boundaries and neutron-rich $r$-process abundances before the third peak are shown. This study highlights the needs for further experimental studies of drip-line nuclei around $^{39}$Na for better constraints on nuclear landscape boundaries and $r$-process.