Nuclear mass measurements of palladium and ruthenium isotopes at the CPT

Nuclear mass measurements are critical in furthering our understanding of the production of heavy elements in extreme astrophysical processes, both through direct input into simulations and through benchmarking and guiding nuclear mass models, which aim to predict masses well beyond current experimentally achievable bounds. The Canadian Penning Trap (CPT) has a long history of success in measuring nuclear masses while located at the CARIBU facility at Argonne National Laboratory, which produces many isotopes relevant to the astrophysical r-process through the spontaneous fission of a ²⁵²Cf source. The CPT was used in the measurement of ruthenium and palladium isotopes around A ~ 110. The masses of ¹⁰⁸Ru, ¹¹⁰Ru and ¹¹⁶Pd were measured using the Phase-Imaging Ion-Cyclotron-Resonance (PI-ICR) technique, which has been reliably established at the CPT and achieves relative mass precisions less than 10^-7. These mass measurement results will be discussed and compared to current state-of-the-art mass models typically used for r-process abundance calculations.