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The elemental abundances between strontium and silver (Z= 38–47) observed in the atmospheres of very metal-poor stars in the Galaxy may contain the fingerprint of the weakr-process andνp-process occurring in early core-collapse supernovae explosions. In this work, we combine various astrophysical conditions based on a steady-state model to cover the richness of the supernova ejecta in terms of entropy, expansion timescale, and electron fraction. The calculated abundances based on different combinations of conditions are compared with stellar observations, with the aim of constraining supernova ejecta conditions. We find that some conditions of the neutrino-driven outflows consistently reproduce the observed abundances of our sample. In addition, from the successful combinations, the neutron-rich trajectories better reproduce the observed abundances of Sr–Zr (Z= 38–40), while the proton-rich ones, Mo–Pd (Z= 42–47).

 

Abstract A promising astrophysical site to produce the lighter heavy elements of the first r -process peak ( Z = 38 − 47) is the moderately neutron-rich (0.4 < Y e < 0.5) neutrino-driven ejecta of explosive environments, such as core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers, where the weak r -process operates. This nucleosynthesis exhibits uncertainties from the absence of experimental data from ( α , xn ) reactions on neutron-rich nuclei, which are currently based on statistical model estimates. In this work, we report on a new study of the nuclear reaction impact using a Monte Carlo approach and improved ( α , xn ) rates based on the Atomki-V2 α optical model potential. We compare our results with observations from an up-to-date list of metal-poor stars with [Fe/H] < −1.5 to find conditions of the neutrino-driven wind where the lighter heavy elements can be synthesized. We identified a list of ( α , xn ) reaction rates that affect key elemental ratios in different astrophysical conditions. Our study aims to motivate more nuclear physics experiments on ( α , xn ) reactions using the current and new generation of radioactive beam facilities and also more observational studies of metal-poor stars.