Nucleosynthesis in black hole accretion disks: a channel to form enriched stars in globular clusters?
- Author(s)
- Laurane Freour, Alice Zocchi
- Abstract
Considered as a prototype of simple stellar populations for a long time, globular clusters are now known to host multiple stellar populations. In addition to stars with "pristine" chemical abundances, "enriched" stars have been found, showing enhancement in light element abundances. Many scenarios have been suggested to shed light on the origin of these multiple populations, but none of them can reproduce all the observations. Most of these scenarios involve a mixing between pristine and "enriched" material coming from a polluter. Breen (2018) suggested that black hole accretion disks could be a possible source for the polluted material, which can then be ejected through outflows and mix with pristine material. We investigated the feasibility of producing "enriched" material in black hole accretion disks by means of a 132-species reaction network, varying the temperature of the gas and the timescale for the accretion. Given an accretion disk model, we explored the values of mass, mass accretion rate, viscosity, and radius of the black hole-accretion disk system that would allow for the creation of elements of interest, before the gas is accreted by the central object. Our findings reveal that there is only a very limited region where the formation of some of the relevant elements to explain the presence of multiple populations is plausible; this region corresponds to black holes masses and viscosity parameters that are highly unlikely, based on current observations, thus leaving the puzzle on the origin of multiple stellar populations remains unsolved.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- Publication date
- 03-2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/cfb5ce34-c422-484b-b985-0526f7eec753