Topology of nuclear reaction networks of interest for astrophysics

Abstract

Our understanding of the observed elemental abundance in the universe, stemming from nuclear reactions during the big bang or from nucleosynthesis within stellar environments, requires theoretical analyses based on multidimensional nucleosynthesis calculations involving hundreds of nuclei connected via thousands of nuclear processes. Up to recently, full nucleosynthesis network calculations remained computationally expensive and prohibitive. A recent publication by a Chinese group led by YuGang Ma [1] has proved that advanced computational algorithms developed in the last decade for the purpose of studying complex networks are paving the way to finally accomplish this ultimate goal of nuclear astrophysics.