Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2010 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 55, Number 14
Tuesday–Saturday, November 2–6, 2010; Santa Fe, New Mexico
Session 2WB: Nuclear and Neutrino Astrophysics II |
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Chair: Aaron Couture, Los Alamos National Laboratory Room: Sweeny B |
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 9:00AM - 9:30AM |
2WB.00001: Charting the Transient Sky: The Palomar Transient Factory Invited Speaker: Only about a hundred years ago astronomers came to recognize cosmic explosive events. What was once termed as Stella Nova are now divided into two major families, novae and supernovae (with real distinct classes in each). The variables and the explosions have been interesting in their own right and contributed richly to key problems in modern astrophysics: distances to galaxies and cosmography. The area of transient and variable stars is once again undergoing a renaissance due to wide field optical surveys. The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) was designed to explicitly to chart the transient sky with a particular focus on events which lie in the nova-supernova gap.. With its innovative two-telescope architecture it achieves both high cadence and large areal rate of coverage. PTF was commissioned during the summer of 2009. PTF is now finding an extragalactic transient every 20 minutes and a Galactic (strong) variable every 10 minutes. Spectroscopy undertaken at Keck and Palomar has allowed us: identify an emerging class of ultra-luminous supernovae, discover luminous red novae, undertake UV spectroscopy of Ia supernovae, discover supernovae powered by something other than Nickel-56, clarification of sub-classes of core collapse and thermo-nuclear explosions, map the systematics of core collapse supernovae, a trove of eclipsing binaries and many others. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 9:30AM - 10:00AM |
2WB.00002: Gravitational Wave Astronomy: Exploring the astrophysics of compact object mergers Invited Speaker: When they reach design sensitivity the next generation of ground-based gravitational wave detectors are expected to observe better than one compact object merger per month (and perhaps as many as one per day) throughout a $\sim10^7\,\mbox{Mpc}^3$ volume of space. The majority of these anticipated mergers will be binary neutron star coalescences. The gravitational waves radiated by a source provide a unique perspective on the source's mass-energy dynamics: the changing disposition of mass-energy and the evolving momentum currents. When coupled with simultaneous gamma-ray, x-ray, optical and neutrino observations, gravitational wave observations of compact object mergers offer an unequaled opportunity to explore how nuclear, neutrino, transport and hydrodynamic processes shape extreme astrophysical phenomena, In this presentation we will explore the anticipated capabilities of the next-generation ground-based gravitational wave detectors (LIGO, Virgo and the LCGT), the compact object merger astrophysics that will drive the observed gravitational waves, and how those observations, alone or in concert with electromagnetic and/or neutrino observations, can be used to inform our understanding of the phenomena that underlies them. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 10:00AM - 10:30AM |
2WB.00003: Diagnostics for Thermonuclear and Core-Collapse Supernovae Invited Speaker: I will likely present some new results on (a) variations of silicon group yields with initial metallicity ($^{22}$Ne) in Type Ia supernovae models, and (b) trends in the yield of $^{44}$Ti and $^{56}$Ni as a function of the initial shock density, temperature, and electron fraction in core-collapse supernovae models. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 10:30AM - 11:00AM |
2WB.00004: COFFEE BREAK
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Wednesday, November 3, 2010 11:00AM - 11:30AM |
2WB.00005: Recent Progress and Future Outlook of $r$-Process Studies Invited Speaker: Nucleosynthesis via rapid neutron capture, the $r$-process, is responsible for approximately half of the solar abundances of the nuclei with mass numbers $A > 100$. Five decades after this process was proposed, two outstanding issues remain: (1) which astrophysical environments can provide the conditions required for the $r$-process? and (2) what is the detailed nuclear physics input that governs the yield pattern of nuclei from an $r$-process? Both issues are crucial for a full understanding of this process. This talk will review recent astrophysical models of $r$-process nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers, discuss the implications of elemental abundances observed in metal-poor stars, and describe the interplay between astrophysical environments and nuclear systematics in determining the final $r$-process yield pattern. An outlook of future developments will be provided. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 11:30AM - 12:00PM |
2WB.00006: Nuclear Masses in Astrophysics Invited Speaker: The masses of nuclei are of fundamental importance in astrophysics. They determine the energy generation in stars and thermonuclear stellar explosions, and shape the distribution of isotopic abundances found in the universe and on earth. A major challenge today is the understanding of the masses of very unstable nuclei, which power X-ray bursts and shape the nucleosynthesis in the rapid neutron and proton capture processes. In the last few years this area has been revolutionized with major experimental advances at rare isotope beam facilities. I will review this progress and the impact it had on our understanding of astrophysical processes. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 12:00PM - 12:30PM |
2WB.00007: Underground measurements of cross section of astrophysical Invited Speaker: New direct experimental methods and techniques, combined with the development of new theoretical tools have opened new avenues to explore nuclear reactions of significance for nucleosynthesis at or near the actual temperatures of stellar burning.The main problem of direct measurements is determined by the background signals, which, together with the low cross sections, set a limit to the energy range that can be investigated with a simple setup on the Earth surface. Essentially there are three sources of background, i.e. cosmic rays, environmental radioactivity and beam-target induced nuclear reactions. Each of these sources produces background of different nature and energy, so that each reaction to be studied deserves a special care in suppressing the relevant background component. I will focus my attention on underground measurements describing the LUNA experiment and results. [Preview Abstract] |
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