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This white paper informs the nuclear astrophysics community and funding agencies about the scientific directions and priorities of the field and provides input from this community for the 2015 Nuclear Science Long Range Plan. It summarizes the outcome of the nuclear astrophysics town meeting that was held on August 21–23, 2014 in College Station at the campus of Texas A&M University in preparation of the NSAC Nuclear Science Long Range Plan. It also reflects the outcome of an earlier town meeting of the nuclear astrophysics community organized by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) on October 9–10, 2012 Detroit, Michigan, with the purpose of developing a vision for nuclear astrophysics in light of the recent NRC decadal surveys in nuclear physics (NP2010) and astronomy (ASTRO2010). The white paper is furthermore informed by the town meeting of the Association of Research at University Nuclear Accelerators (ARUNA) that took place at the University of Notre Dame on June 12–13, 2014. In summary we find that nuclear astrophysics is a modern and vibrant field addressing fundamental science questions at the intersection of nuclear physics and astrophysics. These questions relate to the origin of the elements, the nuclear engines that drive life and death of stars, and the properties of dense matter. A broad range of nuclear accelerator facilities, astronomical observatories, theory efforts, and computational capabilities are needed. With the developments outlined in this white paper, answers to long standing key questions are well within reach in the coming decade.

We demonstrate the close similarity of a generalized Fermi breakup model, in which densities of excited states are taken into account, to the microcanonical statistical multifragmentation model used to describe the desintegration of highly excited fragments of nuclear reactions., Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures

Neutron star observations offer a novel approach to exploring Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at high densities and low temperatures. We discuss how the physics of QCD affects the structure and evolution of neutron stars, paying particular attention to heterogeneous phases, quark matter, and neutrino transport. Afterwards, we discuss the status of several types of neutron star observations and what they mean for the physics of dense matter.