Stellar $β$-decay rate of $s$-process branching-point $^{204}$Tl: forbidden transitions

Abstract

We propose a theoretical method to calculate the stellar $β$-decay rates of nuclei in stellar environments with high temperature and density, based on the projected shell model, where contributions from both allowed and first-forbidden transitions are taken into account. As the first example, the stellar $β$-decay rate of one of the last $s$-process branching-point nuclei, $^{204}$Tl, is calculated and studied, where all related transitions are first-forbidden transitions. For the terrestrial case, the ground-state to ground-state transition is unique first-forbidden transition, which is described reasonably by our calculations. At the typical $s$-process temperature ($T\approx 0.3$ GK), non-unique first-forbidden transitions from thermally populated excited states of the parent nucleus are involved, the effective rate from our calculations is much lower than the one from the widely used data tables by Takahashi and Yokoi. Effect of the quenching factors for nuclear matrix elements in first-forbidden transitions on the stellar $β$-decay rates is discussed as well.