R-Process elements from magnetorotational hypernovae

Understand

Neutron-star mergers were recently confirmed as sites of rapid-neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis.

• However, in Galactic chemical evolution models, neutron-star mergers alone cannot reproduce the observed element abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor stars, which indicates the existence of other sites of r-process nucleosynthesis.
• These sites may be investigated by studying the element abundance patterns of chemically primitive stars in the halo of the Milky Way, because these objects retain the nucleosynthetic signatures of the earliest generation of stars.
• Here we report the element abundance pattern of the extremely metal-poor star SMSS J200322.54-114203.3.