Genesis of the Heaviest Elements in the Milky Way Galaxy

Author:

Sneden Christopher1,Cowan John J.12

Affiliation:

1. Department of Astronomy and McDonald Observatory, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA.

2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.

Abstract

We review the origin and evolution of the heavy elements, those with atomic numbers greater than 30, in the early history of the Milky Way. There is a large star-to-star bulk scatter in the concentrations of heavy elements with respect to the lighter metals, which suggests an early chemically unmixed and inhomogeneous Galaxy. The relative abundance patterns among the heavy elements are often very different from the solar system mix, revealing the characteristics of the first element donors in the Galaxy. Abundance comparisons among several halo stars show that the heaviest neutron-capture elements (including barium and heavier) are consistent with a scaled solar system rapid neutron-capture abundance distribution, whereas the lighter such elements do not conform to the solar pattern. The stellar abundances indicate an increasing contribution from the slow neutron-capture process (s-process) at higher metallicities in the Galaxy. The detection of thorium in halo and globular cluster stars offers a promising, independent age-dating technique that can put lower limits on the age of the Galaxy.

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference38 articles.

1. The high temperatures that would be required (to overcome the electric Coulomb barriers) for fusion of nuclei beyond iron would also result in a large number of high-energy photons. These photons in turn result in photodisintegration of nuclei that suppress any possible charge-particle fusion reactions.

2. H fusion in stars occurs in the inner core (approximately the innermost 10% of the star by mass) and lasts for about 90% of the star's total life. After the exhaustion of H in the core the star will then develop a thin (thousands of km) H fusion shell outside of the inert He core. Later when the temperature rises to above 100 million K the He core will fuse C and O. When the He is finally depleted in the core a thin He fusion shell outside of the now C/O core but interior to the H fusion shell will ignite. These later fusion stages occur only during the last ∼10% of a star's life.

3. Supernovae (SNe) are observationally categorized by the presence (type II) or absence (type I) of hydrogen spectral lines. Further type II SNe are normally thought to result from the collapse and explosion of single massive short-lived stars. Type I SNe are thought to be phenomena of lower-mass longer-lived binary star systems with the eventual explosion and complete destruction of the white dwarf member of the binary.

4. A. G. W. Cameron in Essays in Nuclear Astrophysics C. A. Barnes D. D. Clayton D. N. Schramm Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge 1982) pp. 23–43.

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