Bottlenecks and Waiting Points inNucleosynthesis in X-ray bursts and Novae

摘要

To better understand the energy generation and element synthesis occurring in novae and X-ray bursts, we give quantitative definitions to the concepts of "bottlenecks" and "waiting points" in the thermonuclear reaction flow. We use these criteria to search for bottlenecks and waiting points in post-processing element synthesis explosion simulations. We have incorporated these into the Computational Infrastructure for Nuclear Astrophysics, a suite of nuclear astrophysics codes available online at nucastrodata.org, so that anyone may perform custom searches for bottlenecks and waiting points.