Transiently accreting neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries are generally believed to be heated up by nuclear reactions in accreted matter during hydrostatic compression. Detailed modeling of these reactions is required for the correct interpretation of observations. In the talk, we construct a simplified reaction network, which can be easily implemented and depends mainly on atomic mass tables as nuclear physics input. We show that it reproduces results of the detailed network by Lau et al. (2018) very well, if one applies the same mass model. However, the composition and the heating power are shown to be rather sensitive to the mass table used. In particular, the impurity parameter Q_imp at density ρ=2×10¹² g cm^-3 can differ for a factor of few, and even increase with density increase.

Page created on September 25, 2019.