Related papers: The R-Process Alliance: Chemo-Dynamically Tagged G…
Mergers of compact binaries (of a neutron star and another neutron star or a black hole, NSMs) are suggested to be the promising astrophysical site of the r-process. While the average coalescence timescale of NSMs appears to be > 100 Myr,…
We present the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) abundances of up to 10 chemical species in a sample of 59 very metal-poor (VMP, -4 < [Fe/H] < -2) stars in seven dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) and in the Milky Way (MW) halo. Our…
We report five nearby ($d_{\mathrm{helio}} < 5$ kpc) stellar substructures in the Galactic halo from a subset of 138,661 stars in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Milky Way Survey Year 1 Data Release. With an unsupervised…
We report the discovery of nine metal-poor stars with high levels of r-process enhancement (+0.81<[Eu/Fe]<+1.13), including six subgiants and three stars on the red horizontal branch. We also analyze four previously-known r-process-enhanced…
The abundance patterns of metal-poor stars provide us a wealth of chemical information about various stages of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. In particular, these stars allow us to study the formation and evolution of the elements…
We present a homogeneous set of accurate atmospheric parameters for a sample of eleven very metal-poor (-3.32 <= [Fe/H] <= -2.61) stars in the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) and the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE)…
This paper presents theoretical star formation and chemical enrichment histories for the stellar halo of the Milky Way based on new chemodynamical modeling. The goal of this study is to assess the extent to which metal-poor stars in the…
Rapid neutron-capture (i.e., r-process) nucleosynthesis calculations, employing internally consistent and physically realistic nuclear physics input (QRPA beta-decay rates and the ETFSI-Q nuclear mass model), have been made. These…
Chemically tagging groups of stars born in the same birth cluster is a major goal of spectroscopic surveys. To investigate the feasibility of such strong chemical tagging, we perform a blind chemical tagging experiment on abundances…
We present the results of a detailed abundance analysis of one of the confirmed building blocks of the Milky Way stellar halo, a kinematically-coherent metal-poor stellar stream. We have obtained high resolution and high S/N spectra of 12…
The highly r-process enhanced (r-II) metal-poor halo stars we observe today could play a key role in understanding early ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, the smallest building blocks of the Milky Way. If a significant fraction of metal-poor r-II…
We find that the relative contribution of satellite galaxies accreted at high redshift to the stellar population of the Milky Way's smooth halo increases with distance, becoming observable relative to the classical smooth halo about 15 kpc…
The abundance patterns of $r$-process-enhanced stars contain key information required to constrain the astrophysical site(s) of $r$-process nucleosynthesis, and to deepen our understanding of the chemical evolution of our Galaxy. In order…
$R$-process enhanced stars with [Eu/Fe]$\geq+0.7$ (so-called $r$-II stars) are believed to have formed in an extremely neutron-rich environment in which a rare astrophysical event (e.g., a neutron star merger) occurred. This scenario is…
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…
We present chemical abundances for 21 elements (from Li to Eu) in 150 metal-poor Galactic stars spanning $-$4.1 $<$ [Fe/H] $<$ $-$2.1. The targets were selected from the SkyMapper survey and include 90 objects with [Fe/H] $\le$ $-$3 of…
[Abridged] Motivated by upcoming data from astrometric and spectroscopic surveys of the Galaxy, we explore the chemical abundance properties and phase-space distributions in hierarchically-formed stellar halo simulations set in a LambdaCDM…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of rapid-neutron capture (i.e., r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the earliest generations of stars in the…
Reconstructing the formation history of the Milky Way is hindered by stellar migration, which erases kinematic birth signatures. In contrast, stellar chemical abundances remain stable and can be used to trace stars back to their birth…
We present a chemical abundance distribution study in 14 $\alpha$, odd-Z, even-Z, light, and Fe-peak elements of approximately 3200 intermediate metallicity giant stars from the APOGEE survey. The main aim of our analysis is to explore the…