Bibcode
DOI
Carigi, Leticia; Peimbert, Manuel; Esteban, César; García-Rojas, Jorge
Referencia bibliográfica
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 623, Issue 1, pp. 213-224.
Fecha de publicación:
4
2005
Revista
Número de citas
130
Número de citas referidas
103
Descripción
Eleven models of Galactic chemical evolution, differing in the carbon,
nitrogen, and oxygen yields adopted, have been computed to reproduce the
Galactic O/H values obtained from H II regions. All the models fit the
oxygen gradient, but only two models also fit the carbon gradient, those
based on carbon yields that increase with metallicity owing to stellar
winds in massive stars (MSs) and decrease with metallicity owing to
stellar winds in low- and intermediate-mass stars (LIMSs). The
successful models also fit the C/O versus O/H evolution history of the
solar vicinity obtained from stellar observations. We also compare the
present-day N/H gradient and the N/O versus O/H and the C/Fe, N/Fe, O/Fe
versus Fe/H evolution histories of the solar vicinity predicted by our
two best models with those derived from H II regions and from stellar
observations. While our two best models fit the C/H and O/H gradients,
as well as the C/O versus O/H history, only model 1 fits well the N/H
gradient and the N/O values for metal-poor stars but fails to fit the
N/H values for metal-rich stars. Therefore, we conclude that our two
best models solve the C enrichment problem but that further work needs
to be done on the N enrichment problem. By adding the C and O production
since the Sun was formed predicted by models 1 and 2 to the observed
solar values, we find an excellent agreement with the O/H and C/H values
of the solar vicinity derived from H II region O and C recombination
lines. Our results are based on an initial mass function (IMF) steeper
than Salpeter's a Salpeter-like IMF predicts C/H, N/H, and O/H ratios
higher than observed. One of the most important results of this paper is
that the fraction of carbon due to MSs and LIMSs in the interstellar
medium is strongly dependent on time and on the galactocentric distance;
at present about half of the carbon in the interstellar medium of the
solar vicinity has been produced by MSs and half by LIMSs.