Lunch talk on Oct. 31, 2023

The Effect of Reaction Rate on the Pre-supernovae Core Structure and Nucleosynthesis

Speaker: Wenyu Xin (Beijing Normal University)

Venue: SWIFAR Building 2111

Time: 12:30 PM, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023

Abstract: 

The gravitational-wave (GW) signal GW190521 detected by LIGO/Virgo seems to originate from a merger of binary BHs between 60 - 90 M⊙ and the probability that at least one of them falls in the BH mass-gap due to PISNe is 99.0%, which challenged the stellar evolution theory and motivated many attempts to examine the effects of uncertainties involved in the stellar evolution. In this talk, we focus on how the 12C(α, γ)16O reaction rate affects the evolution of massive stars with the initial masses of M(ZAMS) = 13 - 40 M⊙ and solar metallicity. It is shown that the final fates of these stars, i.e., the formation of a neutron star or a black hole, are sensitive to the strength of convective shell burning. Based on the strength of convective shell burning, we proposed a promising two-parameter criterion to predict the explodability of the presupernovae.