Work

Application of the microscopic optical potential of chiral effective field theory in astrophysical neutron-capture reactions

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: A state-of-the-art microscopic global nucleon-nucleus optical potential has been developed by Whitehead, Lim, and Holt (WLH) within the framework of many-body perturbation theory, incorporating realistic nuclear interactions derived from chiral effective field theory. Given its potentially greater predictive power for reactions involving exotic isotopes, we apply it to the calculations of astrophysical neutron-capture reactions for the first time, which are particularly important to the nucleosynthesis of elements heavier than iron. It is found that this potential provides a good description of experimental known neutron-capture cross sections and Maxwellian-averaged cross sections. For unstable neutron-rich nuclei, we comprehensively calculate the neutron-capture reaction rates for all nuclei with 26 ≤ Z ≤ 84, located between the valley of stability and the neutron drip line, using the backward-forward Monte Carlo method with the f rms deviation as the χ 2 estimator. The results reveal a noticeable separation in the uncertainty of rates around an isospin asymmetry of 0.28 under the constraint f rms ≤ 1.56. This highlights the critical role of isospin dependence in optical potentials and suggests that future developments of the WLH potential may pay special attention to the isospin dependence.

Source: Physics Letters B

DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2025.140056

Authors: Bing Wang, Dong Bai, Yi Xu

Institutions: Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Modern Physics, Hohai University, Extreme Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics

Language: English

Topic: Nuclear physics research studies

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond