Neutron induced reaction of light nuclei and its role in nuclear astrophysics

Recently, much interest has arisen in the abundance of the s-process isotopes in stars of various metallicity to construct models of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. Efforts involving both observations and yield estimations of these isotopes are being made for a wide range of metallicities and stellar masses to compare the chemical evolution models with the observational data. So far, in the models of the chemical evolution of the s-isotopes the yields of the isotopes versus the abundance of either 56 Fe (seed) nuclei or 16 O (source) nuclei have been suggested to be linear. However, it has now been shown to be nonlinear for low-metallicity massive stars. The nonlinearity was due to neutron poison by abundant light nuclei. Namely, if the neutron capture cross sections of the light nuclei would be large, the yields of heavier s-isotopes would decrease; the relationship of the yields versus the abundance of either 56 Fe (seed) or 16 O (source) nuclei becomes nonlinear; furthermore, the yields of p-process nuclei would decrease, since the s-process nuclei are the immediate predecessors of the p-nuclei. Therefore, in order to construct models to predict the s- and p-isotope productions as functions of the metallicity and stellar mass, it is necessary to know the neutron capture cross sections of light nuclei at stellar neutron energy. In the lecture, I discuss detailed motive of the study, together with results recently obtained. (author)