The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation

Details The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation

2011-11-16

arxiv.org/abs/1111.3985v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei in metal-poor stars is generally thought to occur via the r-process because the r-process is a primary process that would have operated early in the Galaxy's history. This idea is strongly supported by the fact that the abundance pattern in many metal-poor stars matches well the inferred Solar r-process abundance pattern in the mass range between the second and third r-process abundance peaks. Nevertheless, a significant number of metal-poor stars do not share this standard r-process template. In this Letter we suggest that the nuclides observed in many of these stars are produced by the r-process, but that it is prevented from running to completion in more massive stars by collapse to black holes before the r-process is completed, creating a "truncated r-process," or "tr-process." We find that the observed fraction of tr-process stars is qualitatively what one would expect from the initial mass function, and 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. We test the tr-process hypothesis with r-process calculations that are terminated before all r-process trajectories have been ejected. We find qualitative agreement between observation and theory when black hole collapse and observational realities are taken into account.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The r-Process in Metal Poor Stars and Black Hole Formation will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-349028