Nuclear Theory Seminars at Texas A&M: Spring 2006

Location: Cyclotron Building (434), Seminar Room

Friday, March 10, 10:30am

Prof. Taka Kajino
A frontier of nuclear astrophysics: Big-Bang cosmology and supernova nucleosynthesis

Abstract:

Big-Bang and supernova nucleosynthesis have several similarities although their astrophysical sites and epochs are completely different from each other. We first discuss the Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) in view of the cosmological problem of accelerating cosmic expansion. The BBN takes the key for modeling the dark matter and dark energy. We here propose a new dark matter model without dark energy (i.e., cosmological parameter) in brane world cosmology and discuss the roles of the BBN in this new cosmological model. We second discuss the supernova nucleosynthesis in neutrino hot-bubble scenario, focusing on the roles of light-mass nuclear reactions even in the r-process of heavy nuclei such as ²³²Th and ²³⁸U. We also discuss neutrino oscillations in the supernova nucleosynthesis of ⁷Li, ¹¹B, ¹³⁸La, ¹⁸⁰Ta, etc. We here propose a new determination method of still unknown 13-neutrino mixing angle and mass hierarchy. We make notes on the important nuclear reaction processes.