Nuclear physics and astrophysics

The authors report on recent progress of research at the interface of nuclear physics and astrophysics. During the past year, the authors continued to work on Big Bang and stellar nucleosynthesis, the solar neutrino problem, the equation of state for dense matter, the quark-hadron phase transition, and the origin of gamma-ray bursts; and began studying the consequences of nuclear reaction rates in the presence of strong magnetic fields. They have shown that the primordial production of B and Be cannot explain recent detections of these elements in halo stars and have looked at spallation as the likely source of these elements. By looking at nucleosynthesis with inhomogeneous initial conditions, they concluded that the Universe must have been very smooth before nucleosynthesis. They have also constrained neutrino oscillations and primordial magnetic fields by Big Bang nucleosynthesis. On the solar neutrino problem, they have analyzed the implications of the SAGE and GALLEX experiments. They also showed that the presence of dibaryons in neutron stars depends weakly on uncertainties of nuclear equations of state. They have started to investigate the consequences of strong magnetic fields on nuclear reactions and implications for neutron star cooling and supernova nucleosynthesis