Daiji Kato’s research while affiliated with National Institutes Of Natural Sciences and other places

Kilonova spectra provide us with the direct information of r-process nucleosynthesis in neutron star mergers. In this paper, we study the signatures of elements beyond the third r-process peak expected to be produced in neutron-rich ejecta in the photospheric spectra of kilonova. Ra II, Ac III, and Th III are our candidates because they have a small number of valence electrons and low-lying energy levels, which tend to result in strong absorption features. We systematically calculate the strength of bound-bound transitions of these candidates by constructing the line list based on the available atomic database. We find that Th III is the most promising species showing strong transitions at the NIR wavelengths. By performing radiative transfer simulations, we find that Th III produces broad absorption features at ~18000 A in the spectra when the mass ratio of actinides to lanthanides is larger than the solar r-process ratio and the mass fraction of lanthanides is $\lesssim 6\times10^{-4}$. Our models demonstrate that the Th feature may be detectable if the bulk of the ejecta in the line-forming region is dominated by relatively light r-process elements with the mixture of a small fraction of very neutron-rich material. Such conditions may be realized in the mergers of unequal-mass neutron stars or black hole-neutron star binaries. To detect the Th absorption features, the observations from the space (such as JWST) or high-altitude sites are important as the wavelength region of the Th features is overlapped with that affected by the strong telluric absorption.

Lanthanides play most important roles in the opacities for kilonova, ultraviolet-optical-infrared emission from neutron star mergers. Although several efforts have been made to construct atomic data, the accuracy in the opacity is not fully assessed and understood. In this paper, we perform atomic calculations for singly ionized lanthanides with improved strategies, aiming at understanding the physics of the lanthanide opacities in kilonova ejecta and necessary accuracy in atomic data. Our results show systematically lower energy level distributions as compared with our previous study (Paper I). As a result, the opacities evaluated with our new results are higher by a factor of up to 3 − 10, depending on the element and wavelength range. For a lanthanide-rich element mixture, our results give a higher opacity than that in Paper I by a factor of about 1.5. We also present opacities by using the results of ab-initio atomic calculations by using Grasp2K code. In general, our new opacities show good agreements with those with ab-initio calculations. We identify that structure of the lanthanide opacities are controlled by transition arrays among several configurations, for which derivation of accurate energy level distribution is important to obtain reliable opacities.

The extreme-ultraviolet emission line (424 Å) of the intercombination 1 s ² 2 s ² ¹ S 0 –1 s ² 2 s 2 p ³ P 1 transition of Ar xv can potentially characterize the electron temperature of astrophysical plasma. Various theoretical studies have investigated the intercombination transition rate, which is essential for the plasma diagnostics; however, experimental difficulties have prevented its measurement. We present here measurement of the lifetime of the ³ P 1 excited state of Ar xv , providing the experimental value of the intercombination transition rate. Employing time-resolved plasma-assisted laser spectroscopy, a method we recently demonstrated, enables us to measure this submicrosecond lifetime. The experimental result exhibits a 25%–43% higher transition rate than theoretical predictions.

Spectroscopic studies of emissions released from tungsten ions combined with a pellet injection technique have been conducted in Large Helical Device for contribution to the tungsten transport study in tungsten divertor fusion devices and for expansion of the experimental database of tungsten line emissions. The spectral intensities of W⁵⁺, W²⁴⁺–W²⁸⁺, W³⁷⁺, W³⁸⁺, W⁴¹⁺–W⁴³⁺, W⁴⁵⁺, and W⁴⁶⁺ emission lines were measured simultaneously over a wide wavelength range from x-ray to visible. Time evolutions of the various tungsten line spectra indicate that the tungsten confinement time depends on the electron density of the plasma and is long in high density plasmas, on the order of seconds, and short in low density plasmas, on the order of sub-seconds. When the confinement time was long, the tungsten ions remained in the plasma until the end of the discharge, changing their dominant charge with the change in electron temperature. When the confinement time was short, the tungsten ions rapidly decreased in all charge states and disappeared. Space-resolved EUV and visible spectroscopy measurements have revealed that tungsten ions stayed in the core region of the plasma with changing their dominant charge state depending on the electron temperature in the discharges with the long confinement time. Detailed analysis of soft x-ray emission suggested that the confinement time increases with density and becomes saturated when the central electron density exceeds 2 × 10¹³ cm⁻³.

Electronic K x rays emitted by muonic Ar atoms in the gas phase were observed using a superconducting transition-edge-sensor microcalorimeter. The high-precision energy spectra provided a clear signature of the presence of muonic atoms accompanied by a few electrons, which have never been observed before. One-, two-, and three-electron bound, i.e., H-like, He-like, and Li-like, muonic Ar atoms were identified from electronic K x rays and hyper-satellite K x rays. These K x rays are emitted after the charge transfer process by the collisions with surrounding Ar atoms. With the aid of theoretical calculations, we confirmed that the peak positions are consistent with the x-ray energies from highly charged Cl ions, and the intensities reflecting deexcitation dynamics were successfully understood by taking into account the interaction between the muon and bound electrons.

Tungsten (W) is one of the major impurities in ITER and future DEMO reactors. However, diagnosing ion density, temperature, and spatial distribution for tungsten ions in low charge states such as W¹⁷⁺-W²⁷⁺ is difficult due to a lack of spectral line data. In this study, we observed tungsten Unresolved Transition Array (UTA) spectra around W²⁰⁺ in Large Helical Device. Furthermore, the emission spectra of tungsten ions ranging from W¹⁹⁺-W²³⁺ were also measured using Compact electron Beam Ion Trap (CoBIT). Two spectral peaks were detected in the CoBIT experimental setup. Subsequently, these peaks were theoretically identified as 5s-5p and 5p3/2-5d transitions using Flexible Atomic Code (FAC). The identified peaks are useful for impurity diagnostics of ITER edge plasma.

We investigate early ( t < 1 day) kilonova from a neutron star merger by deriving atomic opacities for all the elements from La to Ra ( Z = 57–88) ionized to the states V–XI. The opacities at high temperatures for the elements with open f -shells (e.g., lanthanides) are exceptionally high, reaching κ exp ∼ 3 × 10 3 cm 2 g − 1 at λ ≤ 1000 Å at T ∼ 70,000 K, whereas the opacities at the same temperature and wavelengths for the elements with open d -, p -, and s -shells reach κ exp ∼ 1 , 0.1, and 0.01 cm ² g ⁻¹ , respectively. Using the new opacity data set, we derive early kilonovae for various compositions and density structures expected for neutron star merger ejecta. The bolometric luminosity of the lanthanide-rich ejecta shows distinct signatures and is fainter than that of the lanthanide-free ejecta. Early luminosity is suppressed by the presence of a thin outer layer, agreeing with the results of Kasen et al. and Banerjee et al. The early brightness in the Swift UVOT filters and in the optical g , r , i , and z filters for a source at 100 Mpc are about ∼22–19.5 and ∼21–20 mag, respectively, at t ∼ 0.1 day. Such kilonovae are ideal targets for the upcoming UV satellites, such as ULTRASAT, UVEX, and DORADO, and the upcoming surveys, e.g., the Vera Rubin Observatory. We suggest that the gray opacities that reproduce the bolometric light curves with and without lanthanides are ∼1–10 and ∼0.8 cm ² g ⁻¹ .

Kilonova spectra provide us with information of r -process nucleosynthesis in neutron star mergers. However, it is still challenging to identify individual elements in the spectra mainly due to the lack of experimentally accurate atomic data for heavy elements at near-infrared wavelengths. Recently, Domoto et al. proposed that the absorption features around 14500 Å in the observed spectra of GW170817/AT2017gfo are Ce iii lines. But they used theoretical transition probabilities ( gf -values) whose accuracy is uncertain. In this paper, we derive the astrophysical gf -values of three Ce iii lines, aiming at verifying this identification. We model high-resolution H -band spectra of four F-type supergiants showing clear Ce iii absorption features by assuming stellar parameters derived from optical spectra in the literature. We also test the validity of the derived astrophysical gf -values by estimating the Ce iii abundances of Ap stars. We find that the derived astrophysical gf -values of the Ce iii lines are systematically lower by about 0.25 dex than those used in previous work of kilonovae, while they are still compatible within the uncertainty ranges. By performing radiative transfer simulations of kilonovae with the derived gf -values, we find that the identification of Ce iii as a source of absorption features in the observed kilonova spectra still stands, even considering the uncertainties in the astrophysical gf -values. This supports the identification of Ce in the spectra of GW170817/AT2017gfo.