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Impact of Newly Measured $β$ -Delayed Neutron Emitters around ${}^{78}{Ni}$ on Light Element Nucleosynthesis in the Neutrino Wind Following a Neutron Star Merger

A. Tolosa-Delgado ^1,2,3,*, J. L. Tain ¹, M. Reichert ⁴, A. Arcones ^5,6,7, M. Eichler⁵, B. C. Rasco⁸, N. T. Brewer ⁸, K. P. Rykaczewski ⁸, R. Yokoyama ⁹ et al.

R. Grzywacz ⁹, I. Dillmann ^10,11, J. Agramunt¹, D. S. Ahn^12,13, A. Algora ^1,14, H. Baba ¹², S. Bae ^15,16, C. G. Bruno ¹⁷, R. Caballero Folch ¹⁰, F. Calvino ¹⁸, P. J. Coleman-Smith¹⁹, G. Cortes ¹⁸, T. Davinson ¹⁷, C. Domingo-Pardo ¹, A. Estrade²⁰, N. Fukuda ¹², S. Go^9,12, C. J. Griffin ¹⁷, J. Ha ¹⁵, O. Hall¹⁷, L. Harkness-Brennan ²¹, T. Isobe ¹², D. Kahl^17,22, M. Karny²³, L. H. Khiem²⁴, G. G. Kiss ^12,14, M. Kogimtzis¹⁹, A. Korgul ²³, S. Kubono ¹², M. Labiche ¹⁹, I. Lazarus¹⁹, J. Liang²⁵, J. Lee²⁶, J. Liu²⁶, G. Lorusso^12,27, K. Matsui^12,28, K. Miernik ^8,23, F. Montes²⁹, B. Moon^30,13, A. I. Morales ¹, N. Nepal²⁰, S. Nishimura ¹², R. D. Page ²¹, M. Piersa-Siłkowska ²³, V. H. Phong^12,24, Zs. Podolyák ³¹, V. F. E. Pucknell¹⁹, P. H. Regan ^31,27, B. Rubio ¹, Y. Saito ¹⁰, H. Sakurai ^12,28, Y. Shimizu¹², J. Simpson ¹⁹, P.-A. Söderström^12,22, D. W. Stracener ⁸, T. Sumikama¹², R. Surman³², H. Suzuki¹², M. Takechi³³, H. Takeda¹², A. Tarifeño-Saldivia¹⁸, S. L. Thomas³⁴, M. Wolińska-Cichocka ³⁵, P. J. Woods¹⁷, and X. X. Xu²⁶

¹Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular (CSIC-Universitat de Valencia), E-46980 Paterna, Spain
²Accelerator Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, FIN-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland
³European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland
⁴Departament d’Astronomia i Astrofísica, Universitat de València, E-46100 Burjassot, Spain
⁵Institut fr Kernphysik, Technische Universitt Darmstadt, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany
⁶GSI Helmholtzzentrum fr Schwerionenforschung GmbH, D-64291 Darmstadt, Germany
⁷Max-Planck-Institut fr Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁸Physics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
⁹Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1200 USA
¹⁰TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 2A3, Canada
¹¹Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2, Canada
¹²RIKEN Nishina Center, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
¹³Center for Exotic Nuclear Studies, Institute for Basic Science, Daejeon 34126, Republic of Korea
¹⁴HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research, Debrecen Pf. 51, H-4001, Hungary
¹⁵Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea
¹⁶Center for Nuclear Study, The University of Tokyo, Hirosawa 2-1, Wako, 351-0198, Saitama, Japan
¹⁷School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom
¹⁸Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain
¹⁹STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4AD, United Kingdom
²⁰Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan 48859, USA
²¹Department of Physics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZE, United Kingdom
²²Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP)/Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH), Str. Reactorului 30, Bucharest-Măgurele 077125, Romania
²³Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw PL-02-093, Poland
²⁴Department of Nuclear Physics, Faculty of Physics, VNU University of Science, Hanoi, Vietnam
²⁵Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4-M1, Canada
²⁶Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
²⁷National Physical Laboratory, Teddington TW11 0LW, United Kingdom
²⁸Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
²⁹National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
³⁰Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 136-701, Republic of Korea
³¹Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom
³²Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46656, USA
³³Department of Physics, Niigata University, Niigata 950-2102, Japan
³⁴STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom
³⁵Heavy Ion Laboratory, University of Warsaw, Warsaw PL-02-093, Poland

^*Contact author: alvaro.tolosa.delgado@cern.ch

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 172701 – Published 1 May, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.172701

Abstract

Neutron emission probabilities and half-lives of 37 $β$ -delayed neutron emitters from ${}^{75}{Ni}$ to ${}^{92}{Br}$ were measured at the RIKEN Nishina Center in Japan, including 11 one-neutron and 13 two-neutron emission probabilities and six half-lives for the first time that supersede theoretical estimates. These nuclei lie in the path of the weak $r$ process occurring in neutrino-driven winds from the accretion disk formed after the merger of two neutron stars synthesizing elements in the $A \sim 80$ abundance peak. The presence of such elements dominates the accompanying kilonova emission over the first few days and have been identified in the AT2017gfo event, associated to the gravitational wave detection GW170817. Abundance calculations based on over 17 000 simulated trajectories describing the evolution of matter properties in the merger outflows show that the new data lead to an increase of 50%–70% in the abundance of Y, Zr, Nb, and Mo. This enhancement is large compared to the scatter of relative abundances observed in old very metal poor stars and thus is significant in the comparison with other possible astrophysical processes contributing to the light-element production. These results underline the importance of including experimental decay data for very neutron-rich $β$ -delayed neutron emitters into $r$ -process models.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 172701– Published 1 May, 2025

Vol. 134, Iss. 17 — 2 May 2025

Received 16 September 2024
Accepted 27 March 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.172701

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by CERN.

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Impact of Newly Measured $β$ -Delayed Neutron Emitters around ${}^{78}{Ni}$ on Light Element Nucleosynthesis in the Neutrino Wind Following a Neutron Star Merger

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Impact of Newly Measured β-Delayed Neutron Emitters around Ni78 on Light Element Nucleosynthesis in the Neutrino Wind Following a Neutron Star Merger

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Impact of Newly Measured $β$ -Delayed Neutron Emitters around ${}^{78}{Ni}$ on Light Element Nucleosynthesis in the Neutrino Wind Following a Neutron Star Merger