Indirect, experimental constraints of (n,γ) reaction rates for the i- and r-process

Abstract

Our Universe contains a large variety of chemical elements, for which only the lightest ones were produced during the Big Bang. To make elements heavier than iron, neutron-capture processes are called for, in particular the slow and the rapid neutron-capture processes. Recently, a so-called intermediate neutron-capture process has received a lot of attention as more and more evidence points towards its existence. Both the intermediate and rapid neutron-capture processes involve very neutron-rich nuclei, for which there exist little or no data on their neutron-capture cross sections. Here we present an experimental method to indirectly constrain neutron-capture reaction rates needed for calculating nucleosynthesis yields for the intermediate and rapid neutron-capture processes.