Related papers: Evidence for r-process delay in very metal-poor st…
About half of carbon and s-process enhanced metal-poor stars (CEMP-s) show a high r-process enrichment (CEMP-s/r), incompatible with a pure s-process contribution. CEMP-s stars are of low mass (M < 0.9 Msun) and belong to binary systems.…
New abundances for neutron-capture (n-capture) elements in a large sample of metal-poor giants from the Bond survey are presented. The spectra were acquired with the KPNO 4-m echelle and coude feed spectrographs, and have been analyzed…
The chemical abundances of metal-poor stars in globular clusters provide important constraints on their evolutionary scenarios. Using both main r-process and weak r-process patterns, we fit the abundances of s-poor stars in the globular…
Metal-poor stars are key for studying the formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Evidence of the early mergers that built up the Galaxy remains in the distributions of abundances, kinematics, and orbital parameters of its stars. Several…
Solar twins, i.e., stars that are nearly identical to the Sun, including their metallicities, in the solar vicinity show ages widely distributed from 0-10 Gyr. This fact matches the orbital history of solar twins in the new paradigm of…
The nucleosynthesis in the first massive stars may be constrained by observing the surface composition of long-lived very iron-poor stars born around 10 billion years ago from material enriched by their ejecta. Many interesting clues on…
We compute the evolution of the abundances of barium and europium in the Milky Way and we compare our results with the observed abundances from the recent UVES Large Program "First Stars". We use a chemical evolution model which already…
Cowan et al. (2021) review how roughly half the elements heavier than iron found in the Sun are produced by rapid neutron capture and half by slow neutron capture, the r- and s-processes. In the Sun, their relative contribution to…
The first stars are predicted to have formed within 200 million years after the Big Bang, initiating the cosmic dawn. A true first star has not yet been discovered, although stars with tiny amounts of elements heavier than helium ('metals')…
Neutron star (NS) mergers are currently the only observed source of $r$-process production in the Universe. Yet, it is unclear how much $r$-process mass from these mergers is incorporated into star-forming gas to enrich stars. This is…
Very old halo stars were previously found to show at least four different abundance 'anomalies', which models of fast rotating massive stars (spinstars) can successfully account for: rise of N/O and C/O, low 12C/13C and a primary-like…
Coalescing neutron star binary (NSB) systems are primary candidates for $r$-process enrichment of galaxies. The recent detection of $r$-process elements in ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxies and the abundances measured in classical dwarfs…
Ancient, long-lived stars remain present in all components of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Born a few hundred million after the Big Bang and during a time that marked the very beginning of the chemical evolution, these stars display very…
Surface abundance observations of halo stars hint at the occurrence of $r$-process nucleosynthesis at low metallicity ($\rm{[Fe/H]< -3}$), possibly within the first $10^8$ yr after the formation of the first stars. Possible loci of…
I discuss the recent progress in our understanding of nucleosynthesis via rapid neutron capture, the r-process, based on meteoritic data for the early solar system and observations of stars at low metallicities. At present, all data require…
We report detailed analysis of high-resolution spectra of nine high velocity metal-rich dwarfs in the solar neighborhood. The stars are super metal-rich and 5 of them have [Fe/H]>=+0.4, making them the most metal-rich stars currently known.…
We provide an individual analysis of 94 carbon enhanced metal-poor stars showing an s-process enrichment (CEMP-s) collected from the literature. The s-process enhancement observed in these stars is ascribed to mass transfer by stellar winds…
The ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II was enriched by a rare and prolific r-process event, such as a neutron star merger. To investigate the nature of this event, we present high-resolution Magellan/MIKE spectroscopy of the brightest…
About half of the elements beyond iron are synthesized in stars by rapid-neutron capture process (r-process). The stellar environment provides very high neutron flux in a short time ($\sim$ seconds) which is conducive for the creation of…
The heavy elements (Z>30) are created in neutron-capture processes which happen at very different nucleosynthetic sites. To study them in an environment different from the Milky Way, we target these elements in RGB stars in the Sculptor…