Thermal Effects on Stellar Neutron Capture Reactions Using a Quantum Dynamical Model

Neutron capture reactions in high-temperature environments play a vital role in our understanding of the age of the universe, as well as the function of nucleosynthesis in the creation of the heavy elements. In general, the temperatures characterising these reactions are variable and can be split into two separate processes: the slow (s) and rapid (r) neutron capture processes. In this work, thermal effects are introduced at the initialisation of the wave-packet with an implementation of the time-dependent coupled channels wave-packet (TDCCWP) method. The agreement of this method with the already accepted CCFULL method is explored for the \(n+^{186}\mathrm {Os}\) reaction. Then, a comparison of thermally-dependent cross sections are made, where a decrease in the cross section is found for an increasing temperature, along with a decrease of \(19\%\) in the reaction rate when a temperature-dependent cross section is used. Abstract Published by the Jagiellonian University 2026 authors