Bibcode
DOI
Casuso, E.; Beckman, J. E.
Bibliographical reference
The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 112, Issue 773, pp. 942-960.
Advertised on:
7
2000
Citations
14
Refereed citations
11
Description
The abundance of Li in stars formed within the past 5 Gyr is
logN(Li)=3.2(+/-0.2), while the corresponding value for the oldest stars
in the Galaxy is logN(Li)=2.2(+/-0.2). The global evidence suggests that
the latter represents the full, or the major, part of the primordial
abundance, so that the difference of an order of magnitude is due to Li
produced in the Galaxy. It is well known that spallation of interstellar
CNO by 4He and protons in Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) can
produce Li, but models yield a shortfall of almost an order of magnitude
compared with the current observed abundance range. Another GCR
reaction, α+α fusion, has been invoked to explain some Li
production in the early Galaxy, but application of this to the disk
yielded too much early Li or too little current Li. These failures led
to a search for alternative mechanisms, essentially stellar, at
particular phases of evolution: the helium flash phase in asymptotic
giant branch stars, in novae, and in supernovae (SNe). Here we stress
the importance of the observed upper envelope in the plot of Li versus
Fe in stars as a constraint on any mechanism in any model aiming to
account for disk Li. We show that a good match can be found assuming
that low-energy GCRs produce the Li, with the α+α reaction
as the key mechanism, although production in supernovae cannot at this
stage be excluded. There is an apparent time delay in the Li production,
relative to O and Fe, which if confirmed could be explained by the
origin of a low-energy α-particle component in processes
associated with stars of intermediate and low mass. The α-flux at
a given epoch would then be proportional to the amount of gas expelled
by low- and intermediate-mass stars in the Galaxy, though the
acceleration of these α-particles could still be linked to more
energetic events as supernova explosions. The present scenario appears
to account coherently for the closely related observations of the
temporal evolution in the Galaxy (halo+disk) of abundances of
12C, 13C, 14N, 16O,
26Fe, the two main peaks (one in the halo and one in the
disk) in the G-dwarf stellar frequency distribution, and the evolution
of 9Be and 10B+11B via GCR spallation
reactions without requiring the very high local cosmic-ray fluxes
implied by the spallation close to SN. Adding a natural mechanism of
differential depletion in red supergiant envelopes, we can explain the
observed time evolution of the abundance of D and that of the isotopic
ratios 7Li/6Li and 11B/10B
starting from a standard big bang nucleosynthesis model with baryon
density ~0.05. Our model also predicts the second Li ``plateau'' found
for [Fe/H] between -0.2 and +0.2, due to the ``loop back'' implied for
Li (also for 9Be and B) because of the required infall of
low-metallicity gas to the disk. Without ruling out other mechanisms for
the main production of Li in the Galactic disk, the low-energy
α+α fusion reaction in the interstellar medium offers a
promising contribution.