arXiv:1803.08335·v1·Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Treatment of isomers in nucleosynthesis codes
René Reifarth · Stefan Fiebiger · Kathrin Göbel · Tanja Heftrich · Tanja Kausch · Christoph Köppchen · Deniz Kurtulgil · Christoph Langer · Benedikt Thomas · Mario Weigand
Abstract
The decay properties of long-lived excited states (isomers) can have a significant impact on the destruction channels of isotopes under stellar conditions. In sufficiently hot environments, the population of isomers can be altered via thermal excitation or de-excitation. If the corresponding lifetimes are of the same order of magnitude as the typical time scales of the environment, the isomers have to be the treated explicitly. We present a general approach to the treatment of isomers in stellar nucleosynthesis codes and discuss a few illustrative examples. The corresponding code is available online at http://exp-astro.de/isomers/
Comments: 24 pages, 19 figures