Nuclear Problems in Astrophysics

Abstract

These lectures, presented at the International School of Physics ``Enrico Fermi,'' deal with two major themes. The first is the remarkable story of the solar neutrino problem, which (along with the atmospheric neutrino anomaly) recently led to the discovery of massive neutrinos and neutrino oscillations, physics beyond the standard model. I will describe the physics of the standard solar model (SSM), the experimental program that was motivated by the discrepancies between SSM predictions and the initial observations of Raymond Davis, Jr., and his colleagues, and the recent results of SNO and SuperKamiokande. These first lectures end with a description of what we have learned about neutrino oscillations and the neutrino mass matrix, as well as the open questions (neutrino charge conjugation properties, the absolute mass scale, CP violation) that could ultimately impact our understanding of baryogenesis, the origin of large-scale structure, and other topics in cosmology and astrophysics. The second theme is the core-collapse supernova mechanism and associated nucleosynthesis. This problem connects neutrino physics, which controls much of the nuclear physics of the star, with the long-term chemical evolution of our galaxy. In particular, the $r$-process, which produces about half of the heavy elements, remains poorly understood, despite important new constraints from studies of metal-poor halo stars. The possible role of new neutrino properties on both the explosion mechanism and nucleosynthesis is noted.