Nuclear inputs for astrophysics applications

Abstract

Most of the nuclear astrophysics applications still require the use of theoretical predictions to estimate experimentally unknown rates. Moreover, the nuclear ingredients of relevance in reactions rate calculations need to be extrapolated in an energy or/and mass domain out of reach of laboratory simulations and for a large number (thousands) of nuclei, so that only reliable global approaches can be used. For these reasons, a permanent effort is devoted to the development of microscopic global models based on sound and reliable theories which, in turn, can compete with more phenomenological models in the reproduction of experimental data. The latest developments made in deriving the various inputs to reaction calculations are reviewed. It mainly concerns nuclear structure properties, nuclear level densities, nucleon and α optical potentials and γ-ray strength functions.