Favorable conditions for heavy element nucleosynthesis in rotating proto-magnetar winds

TL;DR

This study uses 2D magnetohydrodynamic simulations to demonstrate that rapidly rotating proto-magnetars can create conditions suitable for heavy element nucleosynthesis, including the third r-process peak, in their winds.

Contribution

It introduces the first detailed simulation-based analysis of how magnetar rotation influences wind conditions for heavy element formation.

Findings

High entropy ejected material depends on magnetar spin period as S ∝ P_*^{-5/6}.

Neutron-rich winds can produce significant amounts of third r-process elements within seconds.

Proton-rich winds may facilitate p-nuclei production under certain magnetic field conditions.

Abstract

The neutrino-driven wind cooling phase of proto-neutron stars (PNSs) follows successful supernovae. Wind models without magnetic fields or rotation fail to achieve the necessary conditions for production of the third $r-$process peak, but robustly produce a weak $r-$process in neutron-rich winds. Using 2D magnetohydrodynamic simulations with magnetar-strength magnetic fields and rotation, we show that the PNS rotation rate significantly affects the thermodynamic conditions of the wind. We show that high entropy material is quasi-periodically ejected from the closed zone of the PNS magnetosphere with the required thermodynamic conditions to produce heavy elements. We show that maximum entropy $S$ of the material ejected depends systematically on the magnetar spin period $P_{\star}$ and scales as $S \propto P_{\star}^{-5/6}$ for sufficiently rapid rotation. We present results from simulations at a constant neutrino luminosity representative of $\sim 1-2$ s after the onset of cooling for $P_{\star}$ ranging from 5 ms to 200 ms and a few simulations with evolving neutrino luminosity where we follow the evolution of the magnetar wind until $10-14$ s after the onset of cooling. We estimate at magnetar polar magnetic field strength $B_0=3\times 10^{15}$ G and $10^{15}$ G that neutron-rich magnetar winds can respectively produce at least $\sim 1-5\times 10^{-5}$ M$_{\odot}$ and $\sim 1-4\times 10^{-7}$ M$_{\odot}$ of material with the required parameters for synthesis of the third $r-$process peak, within $1-2$ s and 10 s respectively in that order after the onset of cooling. We show that proton-rich magnetar winds can have favorable conditions for production of $p-$nuclei, even at a modest $B_0=5\times 10^{14}$ G.