Related papers: r-Process Abundance Signatures
The physical processes driving chemical evolution in the Milky Way can be probed using the distribution of abundances in low-mass FGK type stars in space phase at different times. During their final stages of evolution stars experience…
The s-enhanced and very metal-poor star CS 30322-023 shows a puzzling abundance pattern of the neutron-capture elements, i.e. several neutron-capture elements such as Ba, Pb etc. show enhancement, but other neutron-capture elements such as…
The member stars in globular cluster M15 show a substantial spread in the abundances of r-process elements. We argue that a rare and prolific r-process event enriched the natal cloud of M15 in an inhomogeneous manner. To critically examine…
The supernova yields of r-process elements are obtained as a function of the mass of their progenitor stars from the abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor stars on the left-side [Ba/Mg]-[Mg/H] boundary with a procedure proposed by…
Half of all the elements in the universe heavier than iron were created by rapid neutron capture. The theory for this astrophysical `$r$-process' was worked out six decades ago and requires an enormous neutron flux to make the bulk of these…
Methods to determine abundances of the elements in the atmospheres of F, G, and K stars with precisions of 0.01-0.03 dex are reviewed. Such high-precision stellar abundances have led to the discovery of unexpected phenomena and relations…
Of the variations in the elemental abundance patterns of stars enhanced with $r$-process elements, the variation in the relative actinide-to-lanthanide ratio is among the most significant. We investigate the source of these actinide…
The r-process of nucleosynthesis requires a large neutron-to-seed nucleus ratio. This does not, however, that there be an excess of neutrons over protons. If the expansion of the material is sufficiently rapid and the entropy per nucleon is…
The productions of thorium and uranium are key ingredients in $r$-process nucleo-cosmochronology. With the combination of improved nuclear and stellar data, we have made detailed investigations on the $r$-process abundance pattern in the…
The role of compact binary mergers as the main production site of r-process elements is investigated by combining stellar abundances of Eu observed in the Milky Way, galactic chemical evolution (GCE) simulations, binary population synthesis…
The detailed chemical composition of most metal-poor halo stars has been found to be highly uniform, but a minority of stars exhibit dramatic enhancements in their abundances of heavy neutron-capture elements and/or of carbon. The key…
From newly-obtained high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra the abundances of the elements La and Eu have been determined over the stellar metallicity range -3<[Fe/H]<+0.3 in 159 giant and dwarf stars. Lanthanum is predominantly…
Here, we delineate a comprehensive abundance analysis of four $r$-process enhanced metal-poor stars observed with HORuS spectrograph on a 10-m class telescope, GTC. The high signal-to-noise ratio at $R \approx 25000$ spectral resolution…
We use cosmological, magnetohydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies from the Auriga project to study their enrichment with rapid neutron capture (r-process) elements. We implement a variety of enrichment models from both…
Neutron star mergers have been proposed as the main source of heavy $r$-process nucleosynthesis in the Universe. However, the mergers' significant expected delay after binary formation is in tension with observed very early $r$-process…
A population number synthesis code follows in detail the evolution of a population of single stars and of close binaries. We use our code to simulate the population of neutron star - neutron star and black hole - neutron star binaries. We…
Nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei in metal-poor stars is generally thought to occur via the r-process because the r-process is a primary process that would have operated early in the Galaxy's history. This idea is strongly supported by the…
Comparing Galactic chemical evolution models to the observed elemental abundances in the Milky Way, we show that neutron star mergers can be a leading r-process site only if at low metallicities such mergers have very short delay times and…
Planetary nebulae (PN) are an excellent laboratory to investigate the nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of intermediate mass stars. In these objects accurate abundances can be obtained for several chemical elements that are…
Around half of the heavy elements in the universe are formed through the slow neutron capture (s-) process, which takes place in thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars with masses $1-6\;M_{\odot}$. The nucleosynthetic imprint…