Nuclear structure properties and decay rates of molybdenum isotopes

Abstract

Electron capture and beta-minus decay are the dominant decay processes during the late phases of the evolution of heavy stars. Previous simulation results show that weak rates on isotopes of Molybdenum (Mo) have a meaningful contribution during the development of phases of stars before they go supernova. The relative abundance, coupled with the stellar weak rates on Mo isotopes, may change the lepton-to-baryon content of the core material. Here, we report on the calculation of nuclear structure properties of Mo isotopes from mass number 82 to 138, employing the RMF model. Later, we calculate the weak decay rates of these isotopes using the proton-neutron quasiparticle random phase approximation (pn-QRPA) model. In the first step, the ground-state nuclear properties of Mo isotopes such as binding energy per nucleon, neutron and proton separation energies, charge radii, total electric quadrupole moments, and the deformation parameter of electric quadrupole moments have been calculated using the density-dependent version of the RMF model with DD-PC1 and DD-ME2 functionals. The calculated electric quadrupole deformation parameters have been used in a deformed pn-QRPA calculation in the second phase of this work to calculate half-lives and weak decay rates for these Mo isotopes in stellar matter. We calculate the electron capture and beta-decay rates over an extensive range of temperature (0.01 x 10^9 K to 30 x 10^9 K) and density (10 to 10^11 g/cm^3). Our study can prove useful for simulation of presupernova evolution processes of stars.