Related papers: Constraints on $R$-process Nucleosynthesis from $^…
The composition of the early Solar System can be inferred from meteorites. Many elements heavier than iron were formed by the rapid neutron-capture process (r process), but the astrophysical sources where this occurred remain poorly…
Metal-poor stars were formed during the early epochs when only massive stars had time to evolve and contribute to the chemical enrichment. Low-mass metal-poor stars survive until the present and provide fossil records of the nucleosynthesis…
Probing the origin of r-process elements in the universe represents a multi-disciplinary challenge. We review the observational evidence that probe the properties of r-process sites, and address them using galactic chemical evolution…
Comparisons between the predicted abundances of short-lived r-nuclides (107Pd, 129I, 182Hf, and 244Pu) in the interstellar medium (ISM) and the observed abundances in the early solar system (ESS) conclusively showed that these nuclides…
We investigate the origin in the early Solar System of the short-lived radionuclide 244Pu (with a half life of 80 Myr) produced by the rapid (r) neutron-capture process. We consider two large sets of r-process nucleosynthesis models and…
(Abridged) The stellar sites and the complete mechanism of r-process nucleosynthesis are still unresolved issues. From consideration of the observed abundances in metal-poor stars, it is proposed that the production of the heavy r-process…
The origin of half of the rapid neutron-capture nucleosynthesis (r-process) elements in the Universe remains an open question. Binary neutron star (BNS) mergers have been shown to face difficulties in reproducing the observed r-process…
We examine the origin of the short-lived radionuclides (SLRs, defined as having half-lives between 0.1 and 100 Ma) present in the early Solar System (ESS) by investigating how predictions of their abundances in the interstellar medium (ISM)…
Observations of GW170817 strongly suggest that binary neutron star (BNS) mergers produce rapid neutron-capture nucleosynthesis (r-process) elements. However, it remains an open question whether these mergers can account for all the…
The astrophysical site(s) of the r-process are uncertain, with candidates such as neutron star mergers and magneto-rotational supernovae predicting different event rates, delay times, and heavy-element yields. Galactic chemical evolution…
The chemical abundances of elements such as barium and the lanthanides are essential to understand the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in the early Universe as well as the contribution of different neutron capture processes (for example…
Although the rapid neutron-capture process, or r-process, is fundamentally important for explaining the origin of approximately half of the stable nuclei with A > 60, the astrophysical site of this process has not been identified yet. Here…
Short-lived radioactive nuclei (SLR) with mean lives below 100 Myr provide us with unique insights into current galactic nucleosynthetic events, as well as events that contributed to the material of our Solar System more that 4.6 Gyr ago.…
Long-lived radioactive nuclei play an important role as nucleo-cosmochronometers and as cosmic tracers of nucleosynthetic source activity. In particular nuclei in the actinide region like thorium, uranium, and plutonium can testify to the…
We perform a comparative analysis of nucleosynthesis yields from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers, black hole-neutron star (BHNS) mergers, and core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) with the goal of determining which are the most dominant…
We determine the contributions of the rapid (r) and slow (s) neutron capture processes to the Ba isotope mixture, along with Ba, Eu, and Sr NLTE abundances, in a sample of very metal-poor stars. The selected stars formed before the…
I show that recent observations of r-process abundances in metal-poor stars are difficult to explain if neutron star mergers (NSMs) are the major r-process sources. In contrast, such observations and meteoritic data on Hf182 and I129 in the…
The tentative identification of a Li-Paczynski macronova following the short GRB 130603B indicated that a few hundredths of a solar mass of neutron star matter were ejected and that this ejected mass has radioactively decayed into heavy…
A long-standing scientific puzzle has been to explain the origin of the heaviest elements in the Universe and, more particularly, the production of the elements heavier than iron up to uranium. The rapid neutron capture process (or…
In addition to long-lived radioactive nuclei like U and Th isotopes, which have been used to measure the age of the Galaxy, also radioactive nuclei with half-lives between 0.1 and 100 million years (short-lived radionuclides, SLRs) were…