English

Heavy element nucleosynthesis in rotating proto-magnetar winds

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-07-03 v1

Abstract

The astrophysical origin of elements synthesized through the rapid neutron capture process (rr-process) is a long standing mystery. The hot and dense environments of core-collapse supernovae have been suggested as potential rr-process sites, particularly the neutrino-driven wind from the newly-born protoneutron star (PNS). Wind models that neglect the potential effects of strong magnetic fields and/or rapid rotation of the PNS typically fail to achieve the necessary conditions for production of the third rr-process peak, but robustly produce a limited or weak rr-process for neutron-rich winds. Axisymmetric magnetohydrodynamic simulations of rotating and non-rotating PNS winds with magnetar-strength fields reveal that high entropy material is quasi-periodically ejected from the equatorial closed zone of the PNS magnetosphere. Here, we post-process tracer particle trajectories from these simulations using a nuclear reaction network in order to explore the resulting nucleosynthesis across a range of PNS magnetic field strengths, rotation rates, and neutrino luminosities (cooling phase after core-bounce). We find that a robust rr-process up to and beyond the third peak is generic to magnetar birth, even for magnetic fields as weak as 5×1014\sim 5\times 10^{14} G. Depending on the distribution of magnetic field strengths and rotation at birth, we estimate that magnetized PNS winds could account for 5100%\sim 5-100\% of the Galactic rr-process inventory, extending up to the third peak. The robust rr-process in our calculations is accompanied by overproduction of elements with mass number A120\rm A\lesssim 120 compared to the Solar abundances. We also find that 92Mo^{92}\rm Mo (a pp-isotope) is produced in significant quantities in neutron-rich winds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.01094,
  title  = {Heavy element nucleosynthesis in rotating proto-magnetar winds},
  author = {Tejas Prasanna and Matthew S. B. Coleman and Todd A. Thompson and Brian D. Metzger and Anirudh Patel and Bradley S. Meyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.01094},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages, 12 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:42:11.970Z