2022 journal article
Searching for the origin of the rare-earth peak with precision mass measurements across Ce-Eu isotopic chains
PHYSICAL REVIEW C, 105(5).
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
7. Affordable and Clean Energy
(Web of Science)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: June 27, 2022
A nuclear mass survey of rare-earth isotopes has been conducted with the Canadian Penning Trap mass spectrometer using the most neutron-rich nuclei thus far extracted from the CARIBU facility. We present a collection of 12 nuclear masses determined with a precision of (cid:2) 10 keV / c 2 for Z = 58–63 nuclei near N = 100. Independently, a detailed study exploring the role of nuclear masses in the formation of the r -process rare-earth abundance peak has been performed. Employing a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique, mass predictions of lanthanide isotopes have been made which uniquely reproduce the observed solar abundances near A = 164 under three distinct astrophysical outflow conditions. We demonstrate that the mass surface trends thus far mapped out by our measurements are most consistent with MCMC mass predictions given an r process that forms the rare-earth peak during an extended ( n ,γ ) (cid:2) ( γ, n ) equilibrium.