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Electron capture rates on neutron-rich nuclei (A>65) were calculated within the Random Phase Approximation with partial number formalism, including allowed and forbidden transitions. The partial occupation numbers were provided as a function of temperature by Shell-Model Monte Carlo calculations, including an pairing+quadrupole interaction. Capture rates on relevent nuclei were calculated for density and temperature conditions during the core collapse of a massive star. It was found that electron captures on nuclei can compete with electron captures on free protons. Furthermore, they produce neutrinos with average energies lower than neutrinos emitted from captures on free protons, with possible consequences on the cooling of the core.
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Electron captures on nuclei play an important role in the dynamics of the collapsing core of a massive star that leads to a supernova explosion. Recent calculations of these capture rates were based on microscopic models which account for relevant degrees of freedom. Due to computational restrictions such calculations were limited to a modest number of nuclei, mainly in the mass range A=45-110. Recent supernova simulations show that this pool of nuclei, however, omits the very neutron-rich and heavy nuclei which dominate the nuclear composition during the last phase of the collapse before neutrino trapping. Assuming that the composition is given by Nuclear Statistical Equilibrium we present here electron capture rates for collapse conditions derived from individual rates for roughly 2700 individual nuclei. For those nuclei which dominate in the early stage of the collapse, the individual rates are derived within the framework of microscopic models, while for the nuclei which dominate at high densities we have derived the rates based on the Random Phase Approximation with a global parametrization of the single particle occupation numbers. In addition, we have improved previous rate evaluations by properly including screening corrections to the reaction rates into account.
During the late stages of gravitational core-collapse of massive stars, extreme isospin asymmetries are reached within the core. Due to the lack of microscopic calculations of electron capture (EC) rates for all relevant nuclei, in general simple analytic parameterizations are employed. We study here several extensions of these parameterizations, allowing for a temperature, electron density and isospin dependence as well as for odd-even effects. The latter extra degrees of freedom considerably improve the agreement with large scale microscopic rate calculations. We find, in particular, that the isospin dependence leads to a significant reduction of the global EC rates during core collapse with respect to fiducial results, where rates optimized on calculations of stable $fp$-shell nuclei are used. Our results indicate that systematic microscopic calculations and experimental measurements in the $Napprox 50$ neutron rich region are desirable for realistic simulations of the core-collapse.
The importance of microphysical inputs from laboratory nuclear experiments and theoretical nuclear structure calculations in the understanding of the core collapse dynamics, and the subsequent supernova explosion, is largely recognized in the recent literature. In this work, we analyze the impact of the masses of very neutron rich nuclei on the matter composition during collapse, and the corresponding electron capture rate. To this aim, we introduce an empirical modification of the popular Duflo-Zuker mass model to account for possible shell quenching far from stability, and study the effect of the quenching on the average electron capture rate. We show that the preeminence of the $N=50$ and $N=82$ closed shells in the collapse dynamics is considerably decreased if the shell gaps are reduced in the region of $^{78}$Ni and beyond. As a consequence, local modifications of the overall electron capture rate up to 30% can be expected, with integrated values strongly dependent on the stiffness of magicity quenching and progenitor mass and potential important consequences on the entropy generation, the neutrino emissivity, and the mass of the core at bounce. Our work underlines the importance of new experimental measurements in this region of the nuclear chart, the most crucial information being the nuclear mass and the Gamow-Teller strength. Reliable microscopic calculations of the associated elementary rate, in a wide range of temperatures and electron densities, optimized on these new empirical information, will be additionally needed to get quantitative predictions of the collapse dynamics.
The impact of electron-capture (EC) cross sections on neutron-rich nuclei on the dynamics of core-collapse during infall and early post-bounce is studied performing spherically symmetric simulations in general relativity using a multigroup scheme for neutrino transport and full nuclear distributions in extended nuclear statistical equilibrium models. We thereby vary the prescription for EC rates on individual nuclei, the nuclear interaction for the EoS, the mass model for the nuclear statistical equilibrium distribution and the progenitor model. In agreement with previous works, we show that the individual EC rates are the most important source of uncertainty in the simulations, while the other inputs only marginally influence the results. A recently proposed analytic formula to extrapolate microscopic results on stable nuclei for EC rates to the neutron rich region, with a functional form motivated by nuclear-structure data and parameters fitted from large scale shell model calculations, is shown to lead to a sizable (16%) reduction of the electron fraction at bounce compared to more primitive prescriptions for the rates, leading to smaller inner core masses and slower shock propagation. We show that the EC process involves $approx$ 130 different nuclear species around 86 Kr mainly in the N = 50 shell closure region, and establish a list of the most important nuclei to be studied in order to constrain the global rates.
Supernova simulations to date have assumed that during core collapse electron captures occur dominantly on free protons, while captures on heavy nuclei are Pauli-blocked and are ignored. We have calculated rates for electron capture on nuclei with mass numbers A=65-112 for the temperatures and densities appropriate for core collapse. We find that these rates are large enough so that, in contrast to previous assumptions, electron capture on nuclei dominates over capture on free protons. This leads to significant changes in core collapse simulations.
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