Abstract
Despite the advances in discovering new nuclei, modeling microscopic nuclear structure, nuclear reactors, and stellar nucleosynthesis, we lack a systemic tool, in the form of a network framework,
to understand the structure and dynamics of 70 thousands reactions discovered until now.
We assemble here a nuclear reaction network in which a node represents a nuclide, and a link represents a direct reaction between nuclides.
Interestingly, the degree distribution of nuclear network exhibits
a bimodal distribution that significantly deviates from
the power-law distribution of scale-free networks and
Poisson distribution of random networks.
The distribution is universal for reactions with a rate below the threshold,
λ-Tγ, where T is the temperature and γ≈1.05.
We discovered three rules that govern the structure pattern of nuclear reaction network: (i) reaction-type is determined by linking choices, (ii) spatial distances between the reacting nuclides are short,
and (iii) each node in- and out- degrees are close to each other.
By incorporating these three rules, our model
unveils the underlying nuclear reaction patterns hidden
in a large and dense nuclear reaction network.
It enables us
to predict missing links that
represent possible new nuclear reactions not yet discovered.
Nuclear Reaction Network Unveils Novel Reaction Patterns Based on Stellar Energies
