Investigation on Rare Nuclear Processes in Hf Nuclides
, Pierluigi Belli 1,2, Rita Bernabei 1,2, Fabio Cappella 3,4, Riccardo Cerulli 1,2, Antonella Incicchitti 3,4, Matthias Laubenstein 5, Alice Leoncini 1,2, Vittorio Merlo 1,2, Serge Nagorny 6,7, Stefano Nisi 5 and Peng Wang 6,8Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Your manuscript entitled “Investigation on Rare Nuclear Processes in Hf Nuclides” deals with a very interesting subject, and is, in general, very well written.
However, I would like to address a few points, which need to be considered before publication.
First of all the beginning and the end, i.e. the abstract and the list of references, fail to fulfill their meaning.
The abstract is too vague and does not really inform about the work. Your manuscript deals to a large degree with theoretical considerations what should be mentioned, the conducted measurements are not clear, and finally you write about research impact in the context of astrophysical physics, which is not a real issue in your manuscript. (Please correct “constest” to “context” in the last sentence of your abstract).
The list of references on the other hand emits a very strong aura of carelessness. Besides the fact that there are specifications on the format from the Journal, it should at least be homogenous, mentioning all authors of all papers.
Apart from those points, your manuscript gives a good overview on the work done on the (possible) decay of these nuclides. I would, however, advise you to distinguish your own results from those already published. After reading to the end of your work, I had trouble to sum up your part of all presented results. Maybe compose a table comparing your results and those from the literature.
Furthermore, please provide numerical data from your experiments including statistical considerations and uncertainties, which play an important role in this kind of measurements.
Finally, you mention in one sentence the use of isotopically enriched Hf for such experiments. This may be an important consideration, and you might expand this discussion in you manuscript and better assess the potential of that idea.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The review is generally well done with relevant collection of data compiled together. There are a few suggestions:
- Abstract has no useful details. It is written basically as a few sentences, very general. Need to include some major points from the paper. consider borrowing some details from Conclusions.
- Check for grammar and style to make sure all sentences are grammatically proper and clear to the readers.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
