Neutrino-driven Core-collapse Supernova Yields in Galactic Chemical Evolution

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed neutrino-driven supernova yields for a wide range of stellar masses and metallicities, and demonstrates their significant impact on galactic chemical evolution models and observed element abundance ratios.

Contribution

It introduces a new set of supernova yields with natural remnant mass cuts and unmodified neutrino luminosities, improving nucleosynthesis accuracy for GCE applications.

Findings

Supernova yields significantly influence galactic chemical evolution predictions.

At least half of massive stars must explode to match observed element ratios.

Explosion energy affects iron production and abundance ratios.

Abstract

We provide yields from 189 neutrino-driven core-collapse supernova (CCSN) simulations covering zero-age main sequence masses between 11 and 75 solar masses and three different metallicities. Our CCSN simulations have two main advantages compared to previous methods used for applications in Galactic chemical evolution (GCE). Firstly, the mass cut between remnant and ejecta evolves naturally. Secondly, the neutrino luminosities and thus the electron fraction are not modified. Both is key to obtain an accurate nucleosynthesis. We follow the composition with an in-situ nuclear reaction network including the 16 most abundant isotopes and use the yields as input in a GCE model of the Milky Way. We adopt a GCE which takes into account infall of gas as well as nucleosynthesis from a large variety of stellar sources. The GCE model is calibrated to reproduce the main features of the solar vicinity. For the CCSN models, we use different calibrations and propagate the uncertainty. We find a big impact of the CCSN yields on our GCE predictions. We compare the abundance ratios of C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, Ti, and Cr with respect to Fe to an observational data set as homogeneous as possible. From this, we conclude that at least half of the massive stars have to explode to match the observed abundance ratios. If the explosions are too energetic, the high amount of iron will suppress the abundance ratios. With this, we demonstrate how GCE models can be used to constrain the evolution and deaths of massive stars.