The Origin of r-process Elements in the Milky Way
By B. Cot'e, Chris L. Fryer, Krzysztof Belczyński, Oleg Korobkin, M. Chru'sli'nska, N. Vassh, M. Mumpower, Jonas Lippuner, T. Sprouse, Ruth Surman and 1 more. 2017
178 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Some of the heavy elements, such as gold and europium (Eu), are almost exclusively formed by the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). However, it is still unclear which astrophysical site between core-collapse supernovae and neutron star–neutron star (NS–NS) mergers produced most of the r-process elements in the universe. Galactic chemical evolution (GCE) models can test these scenarios by quantifying the frequency and yields required to reproduce the amount of europium (Eu) observed in galaxies. Although NS–NS mergers have become popular candidates, their required frequency (or rate) needs to be consistent with that obtained from gravitational wave measurements. Here, we address the first NS–NS merger detected by LIGO/Virgo (GW170817) and its associated gamma-ray burst and analyze their implication for the origin of r-process elements. The range of NS–NS merger rate densities of 320–4740 Gpc−3 yr−1 provided by LIGO/Virgo is remarkably consistent with the range required by GCE to explain the Eu abundances in the Milky Way with NS–NS mergers, assuming the solar r-process abundance pattern for the ejecta. Under the same assumption, this event has produced about 1–5 Earth masses of Eu, and 3–13 Earth masses of gold. When using theoretical calculations to derive Eu yields, constraining the role of NS–NS mergers becomes more challenging because of nuclear astrophysics uncertainties. This is the first study that directly combines nuclear physics uncertainties with GCE calculations. If GW170817 is a representative event, NS–NS mergers can produce Eu in sufficient amounts and are likely to be the main r-process site.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee2fd0fc91ae33f2d95f9de573eb9dcbc9442f68
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ Compact Object and a Neutron Star (2024, background): “…represents a small fraction of all short gamma-ray bursts, for which astrophysical beaming-corrected rate estimates range from O (10 − 1000) Gpc − 3 yr − 1 (Mandel & Broekgaarden 2022), and of the total r -process material produced by compact-object mergers (Cˆot´e et al. 2018; Chen et al. 2021b).”
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- Long-term GRMHD simulations of neutron star merger accretion discs: implications for electromagnetic counterparts (2018, background): “It has established neutron star mergers as an important (if not dominant) site of r-process element production (e.g., Kasen et al. 2017; Côté et al. 2018; Hotokezaka et al. 2018), provided unambiguous association between a neutron star merger and a short gamma-ray burst (Abbott et al. 2017b), and…”