Nuclear reactions with exotic beams to decode neutron stars

In X-ray binaries a neutron star accretes material from its companion star. Nuclear burning of accreted material on the surface of a neutron star leads to type-I X-ray bursts, which provide ideal astrophysical laboratories to study the properties of neutron stars, and synthesis of elements in the explosive astrophysical environments. New observations from these explosive astronomical events are generating exciting new challenges for nuclear physics. To decode observations from X-ray binaries, new nuclear data on very exotic nuclei is required, e.g., nuclear reaction rates or detailed nuclear structure/properties of exotic nuclei. Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), one of the world's leading radioactive ion beam facilities, will provide an unprecedented access to the very exotic proton-rich and neutron-rich nuclei. The need for new nuclear physics data to decode observations from X-ray binaries and how FRIB is opening a new window to explore the most exotic nuclei on earth, to provide much-needed data to facilitate model-observation comparison, will be discussed.