Galactic constraints on supernova progenitor models

Abstract

Aims. To estimate the mean masses of oxygen and iron ejected per each type of supernovae (SNe) event from observations of the elemental abundance patterns in the Galactic disk and constrain the relevant SNe progenitor models. Methods. We undertake a statistical analysis of the radial abundance distributions in the Galactic disk within a theoretical framework for Galactic chemical evolution which incorporates the influence of spiral arms. This framework has been shown to recover the non-linear behaviour in radial gradients, the mean masses of oxygen and iron ejected during SNe explosions to be estimated, and constraints to be placed on SNe progenitor models. Results. (i) The mean mass of oxygen ejected per core-collapse SNe (CC SNe) event (which are concentrated within spiral arms) is ∼0.27 M ; (ii) the mean mass of iron ejected by tardy Type Ia SNe (SNeIa, whose progenitors are older/longer-lived stars with ages 100 Myr and up to several Gyr, which do not concentrate within spiral arms) is ∼0.58 M ; (iii) the upper mass of iron ejected by prompt SNeIa (SNe whose progenitors are younger/shorter-lived stars with ages 100 Myr, which are concentrated within spiral arms) is ≤0.23 M per event; (iv) the corresponding mean mass of iron produced by CC SNe is ≤0.04 M per event; (v) short-lived SNe (core-collapse or prompt SNeIa) supply ∼85% of the Galactic disk's iron. Conclusions. The inferred low mean mass of oxygen ejected per CC SNe event implies a low upper mass limit for the corresponding progenitors of ∼23 M , otherwise the Galactic disk would be overabundant in oxygen. This inference is the consequence of the nonlinear dependence between the upper limit of the progenitor initial mass and the mean mass of oxygen ejected per CC SNe explosion. The low mean mass of iron ejected by prompt SNeIa, relative to the mass produced by tardy SNeIa (∼2.5 times lower), prejudices the idea that both sub-populations of SNeIa have the same physical nature. We suggest that, perhaps, prompt SNeIa are more akin to CC SNe, and discuss the implications of such a suggestion.

Investigation of the Prompt SNe Ia progenitor nature through the analysis of the chemical composition of globular clusters and circumgalactic clouds

“…At a density of 10 9 g/cm 3 , an iron mass of 0.265M ⊙ is synthesized (Leung & Nomoto 2018). A value of 0.23 ± 0.06M ⊙ for the iron nucleosynthesis in a Prompt SN Ia obtained in the paper by Acharova et al (2013) is very close to their arithmetic mean of the aforementioned values.…”

“…Let us note that the average mass of a chemical element released during a Prompt SN Ia explosion is a free parameter of our theory for all elements except for iron, because there are independent studies consistent with theoretical calculations of the explosive nucleosynthesis of SNe Ia (Leung & Nomoto 2018) only for iron (Acharova et al 2013;Childress et al 2015).…”

“…Analysis of the fine features in the chemical pattern of the Galactic disc in the paper by Acharova et al (2013) has shown that there is approximately three-times difference in the mass between the synthesized Fe per a SN Ia exploding in the star-formation regions and a SN Ia exploding in the old stellar population: 0.23 ± 0.06M ⊙ and 0.6 ± 0.2M ⊙ , re-spectively. A value of 0.6M ⊙ coincides with that obtained in the calculations of nuclear burning in a white dwarf (WD) in the classical SN Ia models: W7 -pure turbulent deflagration models and WDD -delayed detonation or deflagration-detonation transition models (Nomoto et al 1984;Thielemann et al 1993).…”

VLT/UVES observations of peculiarαabundances in a sub-DLA atz≈ 1.8 towards the quasar B1101−26

“…That is because iron is predominantly produced in SN Type Ia explosions (Matteucci & Greggio 1986;Acharova et al 2013;Yates et al 2013) and the progenitors of the SN Type Ia have much longer lifetimes than the progenitors of SNe Type II. A high α/Fe ratio is observed in nearly all DLAs (e.g.…”

3D gas-phase elemental abundances across the formation histories of Milky Way-mass galaxies in the FIRE simulations: initial conditions for chemical tagging

“…Some abundance-evolution models have begun to explore both az-imuthal and radial variations across time (e.g. Acharova et al 2013;Mollá et al 2019b;Spitoni et al 2019). Kawata et al (2014); Grand et al (2015), using N -body simulations of MW-mass galaxies, and Baba et al (2016), using baryonic simulations run with the SPH code ASURA-2, found that gas exhibits streaming motion along spiral arms, which could contribute to 2-D abundance variations in gas.…”