Sensitivity to neutron captures and beta-decays of the enhanced s-process in rotating massive stars at low metallicities

Abstract

The s-process in massive stars, producing nuclei up to $A\approx 90$, has a different behaviour at low metallicity if stellar rotation is significant. This enhanced s-process is distinct from the s-process in massive stars around solar metallicity, and details of the nucleosynthesis are poorly known. We investigated nuclear physics uncertainties in the enhanced s-process in metal-poor stars within a Monte-Carlo framework. We applied temperature-dependent uncertainties of reaction rates, distinguishing contributions from the ground state and from excited states. We found that the final abundance of several isotopes shows uncertainties larger than a factor of 2, mostly due to the neutron capture uncertainties. A few nuclei around branching points are affected by uncertainties in the $β$-decay.

3 pages, 3 figures, published in the Proceedings of "Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics Conference (NPA VII)"; see arXiv:1701.00489, for the completed results