Quantifying the uncertainties of chemical evolution studies II. Stellar yields

By D. Romano, A. Karakas, M. Tosi, F. Matteucci. 2010

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Context. Galactic chemical evolution models are useful tools for interpreting the large body of high-quality observational data on the chemical composition of stars and gas in galaxies that have become available in recent years. Aims. This is the second paper of a series that aims at quantifying the uncertainties in chemical evolution model predictions related to the underlying model assumptions. Specifically, it deals with the uncertainties due to the choice of the stellar yields. Methods. We adopted a widely used model for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy to test the effects of changing the stellar nucleosynthesis prescriptions on the predicted evolution of several chemical species. Up-to-date results from stellar evolutionary models were carefully taken into account. Results. We find that, except for a handful of elements whose nucleosynthesis in stars is well understood by now, large uncertainties still affect model predictions. This is especially true for the majority of the iron-peak elements, but also for much more abundant species such as carbon and nitrogen. The main causes of the mismatch we find among the outputs of different models assuming different stellar yields and among model predictions and observations are (i) the adopted location of the mass cut in models of type II supernova explosions; (ii) the adopted strength and extent of hot bottom burning in models of asymptotic giant branch stars; (iii) the neglection of the effects of rotation on the chemical composition of the stellar surfaces; (iv) the adopted rates of mass loss and of (v) nuclear reactions; and (vi) the different treatments of convection. Conclusions. Our results suggest that it is mandatory to include processes such as hot bottom burning in intermediate-mass stars and rotation in stars of all masses in accurate studies of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis. In spite of their importance, both these processes still have to be better understood and characterized. As for massive stars, presupernova models computed with mass loss and rotation are available in the literature, but they still wait for a self-consistent coupling with the results of explosive nucleosynthesis computations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/afcf208d69e9483a1526462bd1f380efc8a17cc8

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Citations in the corpus

Reconstructing the star formation history of the Milky Way disc(s) from chemical abundances (2014, methodology): “Many GCE codes attempt to replicate the [Fe/H][Si/Fe] distribution only (e.g. Romano et al. 2010), without any age information.”
STELLAR YIELDS FROM METAL-RICH ASYMPTOTIC GIANT BRANCH MODELS (2016, background): “Stellar yields are an essential ingredient for theoretical calculations of Galactic chemical evolution (Tinsley 1980; Romano et al. 2010; Nomoto et al. 2013; Karakas & Lattanzio 2014; Mollá et al. 2015).”
Europium production: neutron star mergers versus core-collapse supernovae (2013, methodology): “We adopted the model 15 of Romano et al. (2010), which contains updated stellar yields and reproduces the majority of the [X/Fe] versus [Fe/H] relations observed in Galactic stars in the solar vicinity.”
Nucleosynthesis in Stars and the Chemical Enrichment of Galaxies (2013, background): “Thus, in some of these models (Timmes, Woosley & Weaver 1995; Romano et al. 2010), Fe yields are artificially reduced by a factor of 2.”
Super and massive AGB stars - IV. Final fates - Initial to final mass relation (2014, background): “…chemical evolution perspective due both to the substantial difference in nucleosynthetic products from intermediate-mass compared to massive stars (e.g Romano et al. 2010; Kobayashi et al. 2011), and to the differing contribution/feedback from supernova injecting their energy into the environment.”
STELLAR ABUNDANCES IN THE SOLAR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE HYPATIA CATALOG (2014, background): “6 (left) as [Fe/H] increases, due to the late injection of iron from SN Ia, and a flattening of [Si/Fe] at super-solar metallicities (Matteucci & Greggio 1986; Gibson et al. 2003; Romano et al. 2010; Kobayashi & Nakasato 2011).”
Chemical evolution with rotating massive star yields - I. The solar neighbourhood and the s-process elements (2018, background): “…the field: the vast majority of studies of the chemical evolution of the local halo and disk have been made in such a framework (Prantzos et al. 1993; Timmes et al. 1995; Matteucci 1996; Chiappini et al. 1999; Goswami & Prantzos 2000; Romano et al. 2010; Kobayashi et al. 2011a; Nomoto et al. 2013).”
7Li evolution in the thin and thick discs of the Milky Way (2018, methodology): “Our model for the thin disk adopts prescriptions similar to that used in Romano et al. (2010) and Grisoni et al. (2017).”
The evolution of isotope ratios in the Milky Way Galaxy (2011, background): “…K06) succeeded in reproducing the average evolution of major elements (except for Ti) in the solar neighbourhood (see also the recent study by Romano et al. 2010), and Kobayashi & Nakasato (2010, hereafter KN11) predicted the frequency distribution of elements in the Milky Way Galaxy…”
EVOLUTION, NUCLEOSYNTHESIS, AND YIELDS OF LOW-MASS ASYMPTOTIC GIANT BRANCH STARS AT DIFFERENT METALLICITIES (2009, background): “Nucleosynthesis predictions are also needed to built up chemical evolution models (see e.g. Travaglio et al. 1999; Romano et al. 2010; Kobayashi et al. 2010).”