Beta-decay measurements with total absorption spectroscopy for nuclei far from stability

Understanding the origin of the elements is a driving mission for the low-energy nuclear community. As roughly half of the elements in universe are thought to be generated through the rapid-neutron capture process, a large focus has been given to understanding this process. Sensitivity studies show that the final abundance distributions of r-process nuclei are greatly impacted by β-decay properties, such as half-lives and β-delayed neutron-emission probabilities. Several experimental campaigns using the Summing NaI (SuN) detector for total absorption spectroscopy (TAS) will be presented. These studies demonstrate the capabilities of the TAS technique to determine or select for spin in order to better understand exotic nuclei. Increasing our understanding of how nuclei evolve across the nuclear chart can inform theoretical calculations for a variety of applications, including nucleosynthesis models.