Hydrodynamical study of neutrino-driven wind as an r-process site

Abstract

We discuss the neutrino-driven wind from a proto-neutron star based on general-relativistic hydrodynamical simulations. We examine the properties of the neutrino-driven wind to explore the possibility of r-process nucleosynthesis. Numerical simulations involving neutrino heating and cooling processes were performed with the assumption of a constant neutrino luminosity by using realistic profiles of the proto-neutron star (PNS) as well as simplified models. The dependence on the mass of PNS and the neutrino luminosity is presented systematically. Comparisons with analytic treatments in the previous studies are also given. In the cases with the realistic PNS, we have found that the entropy per baryon and the expansion time scale are neither high nor short enough for the r-process within the current assumptions. On the other hand, we have also found that the expansion time scale obtained by hydrodynamical simulations is systematically shorter than that in the analytic solutions due to our proper treatment of the equation of state. This fact might lead to an increase in the neutron-to-seed ratio, which is suitable for the r-process in a neutrino-driven wind. Indeed, in the case of massive and compact proto-neutron stars with high neutrino luminosities, the expansion time scale is found to be sufficiently short in hydrodynamical simulations, and the r-process elements up to A ∼ 200 are produced in the r-process network calculation.