COMPACT STELLAR BINARY ASSEMBLY IN THE FIRST NUCLEAR STAR CLUSTERS AND r-PROCESS SYNTHESIS IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Kavli Institute for Cosmology and Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA (United Kingdom)
- TAPIR, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125 (United States)
- Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México DF 04510, México (Mexico)
Investigations of elemental abundances in the ancient and most metal deficient stars are extremely important because they serve as tests of variable nucleosynthesis pathways and can provide critical inferences of the type of stars that lived and died before them. The presence of r-process elements in a handful of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP-r) stars, which are assumed to be closely connected to the chemical yield from the first stars, is hard to reconcile with standard neutron star mergers. Here we show that the production rate of dynamically assembled compact binaries in high-z nuclear star clusters can attain a sufficient high value to be a potential viable source of heavy r-process material in CEMP-r stars. The predicted frequency of such events in the early Galaxy, much lower than the frequency of Type II supernovae but with significantly higher mass ejected per event, can naturally lead to a high level of scatter of Eu as observed in CEMP-r stars.
- OSTI ID:
- 22518833
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 802, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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