Recent Outcomes and Future Challenges in Nuclear Astrophysics

Dear Colleagues,

As progress in nuclear astrophysics is continuously being achieved, the field has entered a broad multi-disciplinary phase.

In recent years, several new facilities have been built on the Earth’s surface and underground, and new experimental techniques have been developed.

All these achievements, together with observations and theory, lead to great improvements in our understanding of several astrophysical scenarios, such as the Big Bang Nucleosythesis, stellar evolution and novae explosions.

Nevertheless, several topics are not yet fully understood: we still do not know the origin of the discrepancy between lithium isotope abundance in old stars, with respect to the values predicted by theory, or how some of the heavy elements are produced. Several crucial nuclear reactions are still unknown in the corresponding stellar energies of interest, or their determination is not precise enough to constrain the models. These, along with several other open questions, require further investigations.

In this Special Issue, we would like to overview the status of nuclear astrophysics and how this subject interfaces with other research fields, such as astroparticle physics, gamma-ray astronomy, cosmology, isotopic abundances in meteorites or the detection of gravitational waves.

Both reviews and original content will be considered for this Special Issue.

Dr. Giovanni Francesco Ciani
Dr. David Rapagnani
Dr. Eliana Masha
Guest Editors

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