HFB mass models for nucleosynthesis applications

The latest developments made in deriving microscopic mass models are presented. Mass models play a fundamental role by providing a large part of the nuclear structure properties required for a proper description of reaction and β-decay rates in nuclear astrophysics. Some recent progress made in estimating the nuclear structure properties, and most of allnuclear masses, in the framework of the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov (HFB) mean field model is detailed. The rms deviation obtained with our latest Skyrme forces with respect to essentially all the available mass data falls to 0.58 MeV, the best value ever found within the mean-field framework. Since our Skyrme forces are also constrained by the properties of pure neutron matter, including its stabilityagainst ferro-magnetic instabilities, our new models are particularly well-suited for application to astrophysical problems involving a neutron-rich environment, such as the elucidation of the r-process of nucleosynthesis, and the description of supernova cores and neutron-star crusts. The impact of the mass predictions on the reaction rates for exotic neutron-rich nuclei is highlighted and the influence on nucleosynthesis calculations illustrated.Proceedings of the Int. Conf. on Nuclear Data for Science and Technology (Jeju, Korea, 2010)Impact Factor = 1.204SCOPUS: ar.j