Influence of statistical uncertainties of Skyrme-type nuclear mass models on r-process nucleosynthesis simulations*

Nuclear models play a critical role in attempts to study the formation of heavy elements via the rapid neutron capture (r-) process of nucleosynthesis. We examine the influence of statistical uncertainties in the parameters of one nuclear model, the Skyrme-type energy density functional UNEDF1, on r-process nucleosynthesis simulations by sampling 50 points within the Bayesian posterior distribution of the model's parameters. We calculate nuclear masses and corresponding nuclear capture, decay, and fission properties for each sample to perform nucleosynthesis simulations across a range of astrophysical r-process conditions and report the corresponding ranges in abundance patterns. We forecast improvements to Skyrme-type nuclear models that may occur in response to possible future experiments at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, and we quantify the resulting reduction of uncertainties in r-process simulations. Finally, we discuss correlations between parameters of Skyrme-type nuclear models and specific features of r-process abundance patterns. We discuss possible implications of these correlations.