Abstract
This review concentrates on the two principle methods used to evolve nuclear abundances within astrophysical simulations, evolution via rate equations and via equilibria. Because in general the rate equations in nucleosynthetic applications form an extraordinarily stiff system, implicit methods have proven mandatory, leading to the need to solve moderately sized matrix equations. Efforts to improve the performance of such rate equation methods are focused on efficient solution of these matrix equations, by making best use of the sparseness of these matrices. Recent work to produce hybrid schemes which use local equilibria to reduce the computational cost of the rate equations is also discussed. Such schemes offer significant improvements in the speed of reaction networks and are accurate under circumstances where calculations with complete equilibrium fail.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 321-351 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics |
| Volume | 109 |
| Issue number | 1-2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 30 1999 |
Funding
As a review article, this article naturally owes much to the innumerable investigators who have devoted at least part of their life's work to our understanding of nucleosynthesis in astrophysical environments. The authors would like to single out discussions with W.D. Arnett, G. Bazan, A.G.W. Cameron, R.D. Hoffman, F. Käppeler, B.S. Meyer, E. Müller, K. Nomoto, M. Wiescher and S.E. Woosley which were particularly useful in the preparation of this review. We would also like to thank the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for its hospitality and inspiration during the supernova program, support for which was provided under NSF grant No. PHY94-07194. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-FG02-96ER40983 (Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research) and DE-AC05-96OR22464 (with Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corp) and by the Swiss Nationalfonds (grant 20-53798.98).
Keywords
- Nuclear astrophysics
- Nucleosynthesis