Speaker
Meng-Ru Wu
Description
The merger of binary neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole can eject an amount of 0.001-0.1 solar mass of neutron-rich matter after the merger. The rapid neutron capture process (r-process) is expected to occur in these ejecta and may be responsible for the electromagnetic transient called kilonova or macronova, which is an important counterpart of the future gravitational wave detection. Due to the evolution of the system after merger, various components of ejecta via different ejection mechanisms, such as the tidal force, shock heating, viscosity, and neutrinos, can give rise to distinct features in terms of their r-process nucleosynthesis outcome and the resulting kilonova/macronova light curve. I will discuss these aspects based on our recent works of studying the r-process nucleosynthesis of different evolutionary phases [1,2], the impact of theoretical nuclear physics inputs [1,2], the potential observational consequences [3,4], and the challenging neutrino physics [5].
[1] J. Mendoza-Temis et. al., PRC 92 (2015) 055805.
[2] M.-R. Wu et. al., MNRAS 463 (2016) 2323.
[3] J. Barnes et. al., ApJ 829 (2016) 110.
[4] S. Rosswog et. al., Class. Quantum Grav. 34 (2017) 104001.
[5] M.-R. Wu et. al., arXiv:1701.06580.
