Related papers: Lithium abundances in globular clusters
The light element lithium is formed by nucleosynthesis during the Big Bang. Its abundance can help to define the parameters of the early universe. To find this primordial value, it is necessary to determine Li abundances in the oldest stars…
Lithium is one of the few elements produced during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in the early universe. Moreover, its fragility makes it useful as a proxy for stellar environmental conditions. As such, the lithium abundance in old systems is…
In the globular cluster NGC2808, a quasi-standard initial lithium abundance is derived for a red giant belonging to the `extreme' population, characterized by a large helium overabundance, and by abundances of proton capture elements…
Multiple Populations represent the standard for Globular Clusters (GC): a fraction (10-50%) of their stars have the same elemental abundances of halo stars of similar metallicity (first generation, or 1G), but the other stars (second…
Convergent lines of evidence suggest that globular clusters host multiple stellar populations. It appears that they experience at least two episodes of star formation whereby a fraction of first-generation stars contribute astrated ejecta…
Globular cluster stars show chemical abundance patterns typical of hot-CNO processing. Lithium is easily destroyed by proton capture in stellar environments, so its abundance may be crucial to discriminate among different models proposed to…
Lithium is made up in the envelopes of massive Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars through the process of Hot Bottom Burning. In Globular Clusters, this processing is one possible source of the hot-CNO burning whose nuclear products are…
According to standard stellar evolution, lithium is destroyed throughout most of the evolution of low- to intermediate-mass stars. However, a number of evolved stars on the red giant branch (RGB) and the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) are…
Lithium is an excellent tracer of mixing in stars as it is destroyed (by nuclear reactions) at a temperature around $\sim 2.5\times 10^6$ K. The lithium destruction zone is typically located in the radiative region of a star. If the…
I summarize the results of 15 years of research on the surface abundances of stars in globular clusters. Globular-cluster stars afford a unique view of the physical processes that shape the surface abundances of stars on and beyond the…
I shall review what has been learnt during 20 years of lithium observations in stars belonging to metal-poor globular clusters. The focus will be on little evolved main-sequence, turnoff-point (TOP) and subgiant-branch (SGB) stars expected…
About 1% of giant stars have been shown to have large surface Li abundances, which is unexpected according to standard stellar evolution models. Several scenarios for lithium production have been proposed, but it is still unclear why these…
Mapping lithium evolution for evolved stars will provide restrictions and constraints on the fundamental stellar interior physical processes, which further shed light on our understanding of the theory of stellar structure and evolution.…
The "stellar" solution to the cosmological lithium problem proposes that surface depletion of lithium in low-mass, metal-poor stars can reconcile the lower abundances found for Galactic halo stars with the primordial prediction. Globular…
The measurement of the cosmic microwave background has strongly constrained the cosmological parameters of the Universe. When the measured density of baryons (ordinary matter) is combined with standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis calculations,…
To constrain the universe before recombination (380000 years after the Big Bang), we mostly rely on the measurements of the primordial abundances that indicate the first insight into the thermal history of the universe. The first production…
In the multiple population framework, a number of studies have been accomplished in order to explore the behaviour of lithium with proton-capture element abundances (e.g., Na, O, Al) in globular cluster stars. Lithium offers perhaps one of…
Lithium is extensively known to be a good tracer of non-standard mixing processes occurring in stellar interiors. We present the results of a new large Lithium survey in red giant stars and combine it with surveys from the literature to…
The presence of multiple populations in globular clusters has been well established thanks to high-resolution spectroscopy. It is widely accepted that distinct populations are a consequence of different stellar generations: intra-cluster…
The nuclei of the lithium isotopes are fragile, easily destroyed, so that, at variance with most of the other elements, they cannot be formed in stars through steady hydrostatic nucleosynthesis. The 7Li isotope is synthesized during…