Parker, R.J. orcid.org/0000-0002-1474-7848, Lichtenberg, T. orcid.org/0000-0002-3286-7683, Patel, M. et al. (2 more authors) (2023) Short-lived radioisotope enrichment in star-forming regions from stellar winds and supernovae. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 521 (4). pp. 4838-4851. ISSN 0035-8711
Abstract
The abundance of the short-lived radioisotopes 26Al and 60Fe in the early Solar system is usually explained by the Sun either forming from pre-enriched material, or the Sun’s protosolar disc being polluted by a nearby supernova explosion from a massive star. Both hypotheses suffer from significant drawbacks: the former does not account for the dynamical evolution of star-forming regions, while in the latter the time for massive stars to explode as supernovae can be similar to, or even longer than, the lifetime of protoplanetary discs. In this paper, we extend the disc enrichment scenario to include the contribution of 26Al from the winds of massive stars before they explode as supernovae. We use N-body simulations and a post-processing analysis to calculate the amount of enrichment in each disc, and we vary the stellar density of the star-forming regions. We find that stellar winds contribute to disc enrichment to such an extent that the Solar system’s 26Al/60Fe ratio is reproduced in up to 50 per cent of discs in dense (ρ~=1000 M⊙ pc−3) star-forming regions. When winds are a significant contributor to the SLR enrichment, we find that Solar system levels of enrichment can occur much earlier (before 2.5 Myr) than when enrichment occurs from supernovae, which start to explode at later ages (>4 Myr). We find that Solar system levels of enrichment all but disappear in low-density star-forming regions (ρ~≤10 M⊙ pc−3), implying that the Solar system must have formed in a dense, populous star-forming region if 26Al and 60Fe were delivered directly to the protosolar disc from massive-star winds and supernovae.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. |
Keywords: | methods: numerical; protoplanetary discs; open clusters and associations: general; photodissociation region |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ROYAL SOCIETY DHF\R\221014 DH150108 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 19 Sep 2023 15:41 |
Last Modified: | 19 Sep 2023 15:41 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/mnras/stad871 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:203445 |