Related papers: Learning about the intermediate neutron-capture pr…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of often surprisingly large amounts of neutron capture (i.e., s- and r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the…
The rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) is responsible for the creation of roughly half of the elements heavier than iron, including precious metals like silver, gold, and platinum, as well as radioactive elements such as thorium and…
We report Sr, Pd and Ag abundances for a sample of metal-poor field giants and analyze a larger sample of Y, Zr, and Ba abundances. The [Y/Zr] and [Pd/Ag] abundance ratios are similar to those measured for the r-process-rich stars CS…
Barium stars are s-process enriched giants. They owe their chemical peculiarities to a past mass transfer phase. During which they were polluted by their binary companion, which at the time was an AGB star, but is now an extinct white…
Type Ia supernovae, type II supernovae, and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are important sites of stellar nucleosynthesis, but they differ greatly in their rates, their location within a galaxy, and the mean thermal energy and…
The discovery of gravitational waves has confirmed old theoretical predictions that binary systems formed with compact stars play a crucial role not only for cosmology and nuclear astrophysics. As a byproduct of these and subsequent…
The heaviest chemical elements are naturally produced by the rapid neutron-capture process (r-process) during neutron star mergers or supernovae. The r-process production of elements heavier than uranium (transuranic nuclei) is poorly…
Most carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars are thought to result from past mass transfer of He-burning material from an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star to a low-mass companion star, which we now observe as a CEMP star. Because AGB…
Accurate relative abundances have been obtained for a sample of 21 mildly metal-poor stars from the analysis of high resolution and high signal-to-noise spectra. With these accurate results, correlations between relative abundances have…
We study the s-process abundances at the epoch of the Solar-system formation as the outcome of nucleosynthesis occurring in AGB stars of various masses and metallicities. The calculations have been performed with the Galactic chemical…
Oxygen and carbon-rich AGB stars - and objects directly polluted by them - are excellent laboratories to investigate the nucleosynthesis and mixing processes occurring during the later phases of the of low- and intermediate-mass star…
Context. Over the past few years, the $R$-Process Alliance (RPA) has successfully carried out a search for stars that are highly enhanced in elements produced via the rapid neutron-capture ($r$-) process. In particular, the RPA has…
It has been noted that, in classical extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars, the abundance ratio of Sr and Ba, is always higher than [Sr/Ba] = -0.5, the value of the solar r-only process; however, a handful of EMP stars have recently been found…
We follow the chemical evolution of the Galaxy for elements from Ba to Eu, using an evolutionary model suitable to reproduce a large set of Galactic (local and non local) and extragalactic constraints. Input stellar yields for neutron-rich…
Extremely metal-poor low-mass stars experience an ingestion of protons into the helium-rich layer during the core He-flash, resulting in the production of neutrons through the reactions ^{12}C(p,\gamma)^{13}N(\beta)^{13}C(\alpha,n)^{16}O.…
We analyze the chemical composition of the planetary nebula (PN) NGC 5315, through high-resolution (R = 40000) optical spectroscopy with UVES at the Very Large Telescope, and medium-resolution (R = 4800) near-infrared spectroscopy with FIRE…
(Abridged) The CEMP--no stars are "carbon-enhanced-metal-poor" stars that in principle show no evidence of s-- and r--elements from neutron captures. We try to understand the origin and nucleosynthetic site of their peculiar CNO, Ne--Na,…
We present new abundance determinations of neutron-capture elements Ge, Zr, Os, Ir, and Pt in a sample of 11 metal-poor (-3.1 <= [Fe/H] <= -1.6) Galactic halo giant stars, based on Hubble Space Telescope UV and Keck I optical…
Moderately r-process-enriched stars (r-I) are at least four times as common as those that are greatly enriched in r-process elements (r-II), and the abundances in their atmospheres are important tools for obtaining a better understanding of…
An updated grid of stellar yields for low to intermediate-mass thermally-pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars are presented. The models cover a range in metallicity Z = 0.02, 0.008, 0.004, and 0.0001, and masses between 1Msun to…