Speaker
Description
Simulating nucleosynthesis requires an accurate evolution of temperature and density within astrophysical environments. Contemporary nuclear networks typically post-process tracers from astrophysical simulations and assume the energy generated by nuclear heating is the dominant source of entropy change along the tracer. However, such a procedure neglects entropy changes embedded in the tracer evolution, including those from shocks. Shocks are often found in extreme astrophysical environments, such as NSM accretion disks, which can cause sharp changes in entropy and temperature. As nuclear reactions and thus abundance evolution depend heavily on temperature, neglecting additional changes in temperature will result in inaccurate final abundances, potentially clouding comparisons with observational data. Here, we introduce a temperature-solving routine for the nucleosynthesis code PRISM, which self-consistently computes the temperature due to nuclear heating, shock-heating, and other sources of energy found in Lagrangian tracer particles from simulations. We discuss the impact of this new routine on tracer particles from the 3D GRRMHD NSM accretion disk simulation $\nu$bhlight and compare the abundance pattern changes due to this shock-heating procedure with those due to uncertainties in nuclear data. We additionally discuss how effectively NSM accretion disk abundances map onto metal-poor star observations, such as the well-studied HD222925.
| Category | Theory |
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