The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation
Nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei in metal-poor stars is generally ascribed to the r-process, as the abundance pattern in many such stars agrees with the inferred Solar r-process abundances. Nonetheless, a significant number of these stars do not share this r-process template. they suggest that many such stars have begun an r-process, but it was prevented from running to completion in more massive stars by collapse to black holes, creating a 'truncated r-process,' or 'tr-process'. The observed fraction of tr-process stars is found to be consistent with expectations from the initial mass function (IMF), and they suggest that an apparent sharp truncation observed at around mass 160 could result from a combination of collapses to black holes and the difficulty of observing the higher mass rare earths. They test the tr-process hypothesis with calculations that are terminated before all r-process trajectories have been ejected. These produce qualitative agreement with observation when both black hole collapse and observational realities are taken into account.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 1034139
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-PROC-519280; TRN: US1200757
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at: Origin of Matter and Evolution of Galaxies 11, Wako-shi, Japan, Nov 14 - Nov 17, 2011
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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