4.7 Article

Metallicity-suppressed collapsars cannot be the dominant r-process source in the milky way

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 509, Issue 4, Pages 6008-6027

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab3385

Keywords

ISM: abundances; Galaxy: abundances; Galaxy: evolution; galaxies: ISM

Funding

  1. Royal Society [RGF\EA\180290]
  2. Royal Society University Research Fellowship
  3. BEIS capital funding via STFC capital grants [ST/P002307/1, ST/R002452/1]
  4. STFC operations grant [ST/R00689X/1]

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This article introduces a high-performance analytical model of Galactic Chemical Evolution, which can search the parameter space associated with the neutron enrichment process and concludes that neutron star mergers are the main contributors to the modern Milky Way neutron abundance.
We develop a high-performance analytical model of Galactic Chemical Evolution, which accounts for delay time distributions and lock-up of stellar yields in a thermal-phased ISM. The model is capable of searching, for the first time, through the high-dimensional parameter space associated with the r-process enrichment of the Milky Way by its possible sources: Neutron Star Mergers and Collapsar events. Their differing formation mechanisms give these two processes different time dependencies, a property which has frequently been used to argue in favour of collapsars as the dominant r-process source. However, we show that even with large degrees of freedom in the allowed thermal, structural, and chemical properties of the galaxy, large regions of parameter space are in strong tension with the data. In particular, whilst we are able to find models in which neutron star mergers produce the majority of r-process material, the data rule out all models with dominant collapsar yields. With no other identified source, we conclude that Neutron Star Mergers must be the dominant contributors to the modern Milky Way r-process budget.

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