Monte Carlo simulations of Type i X-ray burst nucleosynthesis

Type I X-ray bursts are recurrent, violent runaway thermonuclear explosions on the surface of an accreting neutron star in a binary star system, driven by reactions on proton-rich unstable nuclei via the rp-process. Large-scale nucleosynthesis calculations are necessary to determine the observed X-ray luminosity and the possible production of rare, low-mass p-nuclides in these outbursts. We have, for the first time, used a Monte Carlo approach with a post-processing nucleosynthesis code to correlate the uncertainties in the (mostly unmeasured) input thermonuclear reaction rates with the uncertainties in the energy generation and synthesized nuclear abundances throughout a burst. Preliminary results and future plans for this study will be discussed.