Sensitivity Study of r-process Abundances to Nuclear Masses

Abstract

The impact of nuclear mass uncertainties on the r -process abundances has been systematically studied with the classical r -process model by varying the mass of every individual nucleus in the range of ±0.1 to ±3.0 MeV based on six different mass models. A new quantitative relation between the uncertainties of r -process abundances and those of the nuclear masses is extracted, i.e., a mass uncertainty of ±0.5 MeV would lead to an abundance uncertainty of a factor around 2.5. It is found that this conclusion holds true for various mass models.