Probing Heavy Element Nucleosynthesis through Electromagnetic Observations

by Prof. Gabriel Martínez-Pinedo (TU Damstadt)

Wednesday 28 Oct 2026, 14:00 → 15:00 Asia/Shanghai

Tsung-Dao Lee Institute/S4F-SW - Open Area (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute)

Host: Dong Lai
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Abstract:
Half of the elements heavier than iron are produced by a sequence of neutron captures, beta-decays and fission known as r-process. It requires an astrophysical site that ejects material with extreme neutron rich conditions. Once the r-process ends, the radioactive decay of the freshly synthesized material is able to power an electromagnetic transient with a typical intrinsic luminosity. Such kilonova was observed for the first time following the gravitational signal GW170817 originating from a merger of two neutron stars. This observation answered a long lasting question in nuclear astrophysics related to the astrophysical site of the r-process. In this talk, I will illustrate the unique opportunities offered by kilonova observations to learn about the in-situ operation of the r-process and the properties of matter at extreme conditions. Achieving these objectives, requires to address fundamental challenges in astrophysical modeling, the physics of neutron-rich nuclei and high density matter, and the atomic opacities of r-process elements required for kilonova radiative transfer models.

Biography:
Gabriel received his Ph.D. in physics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, in 1995. After post-doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (USA), Aarhus University (Denmark), and University of Basel (Switzerland), he became ICREA Research Professor in 2002 at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona (Spain). In 2005, he moved to the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and became Professor of Theoretical Nuclear Astrophysics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in a joint position with GSI in 2011. Since 2018, he is the head of the Theoretical Nuclear Structure and Astrophysics department at GSI. His research interests are related to nuclear astrophysics with focus on explosive environments related to the production of heavy elements by the r-process. He has served as Associate Editor of PRC since 2015. He has been awarded the Gustav-Hertz prize of the German Physical Society in 2008, an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council in 2020, and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Science Foundation in 2022. He has been a member of the Academia Europaea since 2021.