Explosive hydrogen burning

The nuclear energy generation and nucleosynthesis that occur in hydrogen-rich compositions at temperatures substantially greater than 10 to the 8th K are examined in detail. At these high temperatures, a new kind of nucleosynthetic process (the rp-process) involving the rapid capture of protons on seed nuclei (or on the products of helium burning in a situation with zero initial metallicity) can lead to the production of heavy elements up to and beyond the iron group with an accompanying energy generation rate greatly modified from that of the beta-limited CNO cycle customarily employed in such calculations. New nuclear reaction rates of interest are tabulated, and reaction network calculations are presented to illustrate the application of this process to exploding supermassive stars, accreting neutron stars, novae, and certain chaotic cosmologies. Implications for gamma-line astronomy and X-ray burst models are discussed.