Related papers: Nuclear Chronometers
An update on astrophysical models for nucleosynthesis via rapid neutron capture, the r process, is given. A neutrino-induced r process in supernova helium shells may have operated up to metallicities of ~10^-3 times the solar value. Another…
A minimum age of the universe can be estimated directly by determining the age of the oldest objects in the our Galaxy. These objects are the metal-poor stars in the halo of the Milky Way. Recent work on nucleochronology finds that the…
Metal-poor stars provide information on the characteristics and chemical evolution of the halo population of the Galaxy, the first epoch of star formation and Galaxy formation (not just locally but with relevance to high-redshift objects),…
We present quantitative predictions for the abundances of r-process elements in stars formed very early in the Galactic history using a phenomenological two-component r-process model based on the I129 and Hf182 inventory in the early solar…
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…
With the most trans-iron elements detected of any star outside the Solar System, HD 222925 represents the most complete chemical inventory among r-process-enhanced, metal-poor stars. While the abundance pattern of the heaviest elements…
An overview of the sources for heavy elements in the early Galaxy is given. It is shown that observations of abundances in metal-poor stars can be used along with a basic understanding of stellar models to guide the search for the source of…
The dependence of lithium abundance on modified gravity in low-mass stellar objects is demonstrated. This may introduce an additional uncertainty to age determination techniques of young stars and globular clusters if they rely on the light…
Neutral hydrogen clouds with high column density detected towards distant quasars are unique probes of elemental nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution in the low metallicity regime. They provide measurements for several elements at very…
The ages of the oldest and most metal-poor stars in the Milky Way bear important information on the age of the Universe and its standard model. We analyze a sample of 28 extremely metal-poor field stars in the solar vicinity culled from the…
The origin of r-process elements remains unidentified and still puzzles us. The recent discovery of evidence for the ejection of r-process elements from a short-duration gamma-ray burst singled out neutron star mergers (NSMs) as their…
Halo globular clusters pose four succinct issues that must be solved in any scenario of their formation: single-age, single metallicity stellar populations; a lower limit ([Fe/H] ~ -2.3) to their average metallicity; comprising only 1% of…
We explore a sample of 148 solar-like stars to search for a possible correlation between the slopes of the abundance trends versus condensation temperature (known as the Tc slope) both with stellar parameters and Galactic orbital parameters…
The detailed abundance patterns of the stars within galaxies provide a unique window into the history of star formation (SF) at early times. Two widely used `chronometers' include the alpha and iron-peak elements, which are created on short…
In practically all known till now methods of nuclear chronometry there were usually taken into account the life-times of only fundamental states of $\alpha$-radioactive nuclei. But in the processes of nuclear synthesis in stars and under…
Recently an increasing number of studies were devoted to measure the abundances of neutron-capture elements heavier than iron in stars belonging to Galactic Open Clusters (OCs). OCs span a sizeable range in metallicity -0.6<[Fe/H]<+0.4),…
We address the question how accurately stellar ages can be determined by stellar evolution theory. We select the star with the best observational material available - our Sun. We determine the solar age by fitting solar evolution models to…
We report an abundance analysis for the highly r-process-enhanced (r-II) star CS 29497-004, a very metal-poor giant with Teff = 5013K and [Fe/H]=-2.85, whose nature was initially discovered in the course of the HERES project. Our analysis…
A model is proposed in which the light r-process element enrichment in metal-poor stars is explained via enrichment from a truncated r-process, or "tr-process." The truncation of the r-process from a generic core-collapse event followed by…
We revisit a neutrino-driven r-process mechanism in the He shell of a core-collapse supernova, finding that it could succeed in early stars of metallicity < solar/1000, at relatively low temperatures and neutron densities, producing A ~ 130…