Light Elements in the Universe

Abstract

Due to their production sites, as well as to how they are processed and destroyed in stars, the light elements are excellent tools to investigate a number of crucial issues in modern astrophysics: from stellar structure and non-standard processes at work in stellar interiors to age dating of stars; from pre-main sequence evolution to the star formation histories of young clusters and associations and to multiple populations in globular clusters; from Big Bang nucleosynthesis to the formation and chemical enrichment history of the Milky Way Galaxy and its populations, just to cite some relevant examples. In this paper, we focus on lithium, beryllium, and boron (LiBeB) and on carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (CNO). LiBeB are rare elements, with negligible abundances with respect to hydrogen; on the contrary, CNO are among the most abundant elements in the Universe, after H and He. Pioneering observations of light-element surface abundances in stars started almost 70 years ago and huge progress has been achieved since then. Indeed, for different reasons, precise measurements of LiBeB and CNO are difficult, even in our Sun; however, the advent of state-of-the-art ground- and space-based instrumentation has allowed the determination of high-quality abundances in stars of different type, belonging to different Galactic populations, from metal-poor halo stars to young stars in the solar vicinity and from massive stars to cool dwarfs and giants. Noticeably, the recent large spectroscopic surveys performed with multifiber spectrographs have yielded detailed and homogeneous information on the abundances of Li and CNO for statistically significant samples of stars; this has allowed us to obtain new results and insights and, at the same time, raise new questions and challenges. A complete understanding of the light-element patterns and evolution in the Universe has not been still achieved. Perspectives for further progress will open up soon thanks to the new generation instrumentation that is under development and will come online in the coming years.