Neutron capture elements in the Early Universe

1 Jul 2019, 09:25
35m
Meeting room (ECT* - Trento)

Meeting room

ECT* - Trento

Strada delle Tabarelle, 286 38123 - Villazzano (TN) Italy

Speaker

Gabriele Cescutti (Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, INAF)

Description

In the last years, the search for the oldest stars has started to investigate the central region of our Galaxy and its outskirts with ultra-faint galaxies.
Both Galactic bulge and ultra-faint galaxies host extremely old stars, with ages compatible with the ages of the oldest halo stars. The data coming from these recent observations present new signatures in neutron capture elements. Our study, based on stochastic chemical evolution models, shows how this new fundamental information can improve the constraints on the nature of the first sources of neutron
capture elements: the r-process events and the first massive stars.
Our findings support a scenario where at least a fraction of r-process events
has exploded in a very short timescale and where the first stellar generations have been fast rotators. We also predict the existence
of Eu-free stars due to the rarity of the r-process events.

Primary author

Gabriele Cescutti (Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, INAF)

Presentation materials