2026-09-17 アルゴンヌ国立研究所(ANL)

An international research team is reporting on the first experimental investigation of a nuclear reaction to understand the production of strontium in stars. (Image by Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.)
<関連情報>
- https://www.anl.gov/article/unlocking-the-cosmic-recipe-for-strontium
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-026-02713-5
ストロンチウムの元素合成における中性子捕獲反応の影響 Influence of neutron-capture reactions on the nucleosynthesis of strontium
Caley M. Harris, Artemis Spyrou, Pavel Denissenkov, Falk Herwig, Andrea L. Richard, Sivahami Uthayakumaar, Dennis Muecher, Hannah C. Berg, Paul DeYoung, Alexander C. Dombos, Beau Greaves, Ann-Cecilie Larsen, Sean N. Liddick, Stephanie M. Lyons, Gerald Owens-Fryar, Alicia Palmisano-Kyle, Georgios Perdikakis, Daniel Santiago-Gonzalez, Guy Savard, Sunniva Siem, Mallory K. Smith, William W. VonSeeger & Mathis Wiedeking
Communications Physics Published:08 June 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-026-02713-5
Abstract
The astrophysical intermediate neutron-capture process (i process) has been reinvoked in recent years to describe stellar observations that cannot be explained by the traditional nucleosynthesis processes. Despite its success, significant uncertainties still remain including the exact astrophysical conditions and site, as well as the nuclear physics input. Available i-process models strongly underproduce the abundance of strontium (Sr) compared to observational data, while successfully describing neighboring elements, like yttrium (Y) and zirconium (Zr). This discrepancy has been attributed to nuclear physics uncertainties, specifically to the unconstrained reaction rate of the neutron-capture on the isotope krypton-88. Here we present an experimental investigation of this reaction and show that our result provides a possible solution to the aforementioned Sr underproduction in i-process models.


