Weak Interaction Rates of Neutron-Rich Nuclei and the R-Process Nucleosynthesis

The rapid neutron-capture process, or r-process, is of fundamental importance for explaining the origin of about half of the stable nuclides heavier than iron observed in nature. Weak interaction rates for very neutron-rich nuclides relevant to the r-process are mostly beyond the experimental reach at the present time. For theoretical predictions a coherent extrapolation of different nuclear properties away from the experimentally known regions is needed. The results of prediction of the β-decay and v_e-capture rates in the framework of the ETFSI+cQRPA in a comparison with the other approaches are presented.